Wreaths will honor special father and other vets
Published: April 7, 2008
On the second Thursday of December, Lauren Barnes plans to lay a wreath on her father’s grave at Medford’s Eagle Point National Cemetery.
But the Medford resident isn’t stopping with one wreath at the burial site of Craig Barnes, an Army veteran who served in Desert Storm.
Lauren, 16, hopes to enlist the help of others to raise funds to place a wreath on every one of the roughly 13,000 grave sites at the cemetery. The junior at South Medford High School plans the massive mission as her senior project next year to coincide with the national Wreaths Across America project, held on the second Thursday of each December to honor veterans.
“When he was alive, I never really got to show him how much I appreciated him being in the service,” she explains. “I think this is a good way to show that, and to let other veterans know that somebody cares.”
She also wants to raise an issue that is very difficult for her, her sister, Julie Barnes Pace, 24, and their mother, Marisa Garrett, but one they feel needs to be addressed: suicide in the veteran community. Craig Barnes, 46, died on Aug. 27.
“When I tell people he took his own life, I don’t want them to automatically think he was weak,” Lauren stresses. “Anyone who risked his life every day for his family and his country isn’t weak. A lot of veterans have seen things that no one should see and it’s really hard on them.”
The three describe the veteran as a good father and friend. But they also say he was deeply troubled by his war experience.
Prospect-reared Craig Barnes was a disabled veteran who served in the Army for 11 years, including as a crew chief with a medevac unit on a UH-1 helicopter. He was discharged as an E-5.
“He had a combat patch from Desert Storm,” Marisa says of the veteran who worked as a postal service employee. “He talked about it some but when he mentioned it, it wasn’t with a lot of emotion. I never knew how impacted he was from his military service.”
Until he shared with her a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ report in which he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, that is.
“I was flabbergasted by it,” she says. “It wasn’t just PTSD. He had chronic pain from degenerative discs because of the military. He was in pain every day of his life. But he never quit working. And he never complained.”
They were married for 21 years, divorcing in 2002.
“We tried very, very hard,” she says. “But I think he was overwhelmed and I was overwhelmed.”
Yet they remained good friends after the divorce, says Marisa, who later remarried.
“We had a unique relationship with our father, the kind all children would hope to have,” interjects Julie, whose husband, Jarod Pace, recently joined the Navy. “He was a very special father, very caring. He was always telling us how special we were to him.”
Lauren, who became an A-student after his death and is the news editor of the South Paw, South Medford’s student paper, echoes those sentiments.
“He was a person I could come home to with something like an A on a silly little paper and be so proud to show it to him,” she says.
“I loved that big smile he would get,” she adds. “He made the littlest thing seem special. And he made you believe it, too.”
But the sisters also saw a sad side.
“I never saw him watch the news,” says Lauren, who is also writing a book about the last summer with her father as part of the senior project. “And he never really talked about anything about the war. He always changed the subject.”
She knows she needs to get an early start on the wreath-laying project.
This past week she sent out letters to Oprah Winfrey and others who may lend a hand. She hopes a corporate sponsor or veterans groups will step forward to help both financially and physically.
Wreaths Across America began in December 1992 when Morrill Worcester, the president of Worcester Wreath Co. in Columbia Falls, Maine, began placing green wreaths decorated with big red ribbons at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C.
Two years ago he expanded his free effort to include national cemeteries across the nation. Since 2006, six wreaths have been placed on each of the other cemeteries, including the one in Eagle Point. The second Thursday of December has no significance. It just happens that no other major event is happening that day just before the onset of the busy holiday season.
If Lauren is successful, the beautiful Eagle Point cemetery will be the only national cemetery other than Arlington where a wreath will be placed on each grave that day.
“Everybody keeps telling me I can’t do it,” she says. “But I don’t think anything is impossible. I will find a way.”
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