Barbara Gose recently found a family treasure while rummaging through a metal box filled with keepsake photographs belonging to Mary Barnhard, her 106-year-old mother, who died in 2004.
Barbara’s exciting discovery has no monetary worth. But its sentimental value is priceless, reconnecting her to her late brother, Kenneth W. Barnhard, who died a World War II hero.
Intermingled with pictures from the past was a 6-inch by 9 1/2-inch tattered booklet with “REPORTER” handwritten on the stained, tannish cover.
Inside the covers of the booklet, bound by golden sewing thread and secured through three punch holes, was a vocational assignment Kenneth completed more than 70 years ago as a 13-year-old eighth grader at the junior high school in Independence.
In the preface, Kenneth explains why he wants to be a newspaper reporter, and why a journalism career is so important to him.
He writes:
“I have chosen Reporting for my career because I think I should like to write news for a daily newspaper so people may read my works and profit by it. I have tried to show you the importance of my vocation and my fitness for it.”
In the chapter on “Qualifications Necessary for Success,” Kenneth writes that a reporter should be able to “write and picture what he sees and hears so that it will be clear to others ... be quick in his thinking and in his movements ... be free from mistakes in spelling, grammar and punctuation ... state the facts and not his own opinion ... and know how to meet people factfully.”
As Barbara leafed through the well-written, informational 17-sheet booklet, the words “what if” must have run through her mind as she proudly looked at her brother’s “E+” (excellent) grade on the back page and his teacher’s handwritten notation: “A very good booklet.”
What if Kenneth – four years Barbara’s senior – had returned home safely from the war in the South Pacific and become the reporter he longed to be. What would his accomplishments as a writer been? What would his journalistic legacy have been?
Barbara, though, can only wonder. Death prevented her brother from fulfilling “his heart’s desire.” He died heroically on Saipan, in the Marinas Islands, on June 20, 1944.
Pfc. Barnhard, though, did not die in vain. He was posthumously presented the Silver Star – the third highest military award designated solely for heroism in combat – for “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity during action on Saipan” against Japanese forces. He also was posthumously promoted to the rank of corporal.
Serving with the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, Pfc. Barnhard was cited for unhesitantly risking his life to enter a fiery, explosive ammunitions dump housing large quantities of explosives, artillery and mortar ammunitions. While trying to isolate the raging blaze from the explosives, Kenneth died when a Japanese grenade blew up the dump.
The Silver Star citation concludes with these words:
“Pfc. Barnhard’s superb fortitude, cool courage and self-sacrificing devotion to duty in the face of extreme peril upheld the highest tradition of the U.S. naval service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.”
Barnhard’s name is etched on the Memorial Wall at Veterans Courtyard, on the southeast corner of the Truman Memorial Building in Independence.
After rereading Kenneth’s vocational booklet again after many decades, Barbara truly believes Kenneth would have pursued a career in journalism. And why not? It was his heart’s desire, she says.
“There’s no doubt in my mind he would have gone into journalism,” Barbara says, adding he excelled in English, shorthand and typing – three needed tools to excel as a journalist.
Even though Kenneth was an avid reader, Barbara doesn’t believe her brother ever delivered papers for The Examiner. Nor does she believe he was a newspaper reader.
Perhaps it was because the family was too poor to subscribe to The Examiner or any other newspaper, Barbara says, recalling her family lived in a tiny, four-room house on West South Avenue in Independence.
And to make matters worse, Barbara and her two brothers slept three in a bed – in a tiny attic room – until her oldest brother, Milo Jr., graduated from high school.
“And that’s the truth!”
Little did Barbara know in 1941, when Kenneth graduated from William Chrisman High School and took a factory job in Peoria, Ill., that she and her parents would see him just one more time. The occasion was Kenneth’s return home from Peoria to see his baby sister, Judy (Spillman, of Independence), born in 1940.
Shortly after returning to his Peoria job, the war caught Kenneth. In November 1942, he joined the U.S. Marine Corps and departed for boot camp at Camp Pendleton, Calif. Following basic training, Kenneth yearned to return home to say his good-byes, but couldn’t on a three-day pass.
“It wasn’t possible (for Kenneth) to come home on a train from California to Missouri and (get) back in three days,” Barbara says, recalling the family never saw him again. However, he faithfully wrote letters home.
To this day, Barbara believes the one thing that gnawed at her mother’s heart all her life was not getting to see her son again before being sent into combat.
“She never got to see him again after he left Union Station (in Kansas City) to return to Peoria,” Barbara says. “That was it.”
Calling herself a “real patriot,” Barbara wants this story to be a Veterans Day salute to her heroic brother, who was buried in a temporary grave in Saipan. Years later, he was reinterred in Punch Bowl Cemetery, located in a volcano crater in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Cpl. Kenneth W. Barnhard, here’s a belated Veterans Day salute to you and all American veterans. Your sacrifice in allowing America to remain the “sweet land of liberty” will never be forgotten. You made the difference, and we thank you and all of America’s unsung heroes.
