Bob Barrett

(The following is from "Kitty Keeps On Singing," above.)

While the Barrett/Curran family all love to party,* love to sing, it was my uncle Bob who had the musical gift. He could pick up a saxophone or sit down at the piano and play anything.

But World War II comes along and Bob takes his talent with him into the Army, where he is stationed in California and plays in the band.

April 30, 1942: Bob hears he’s going to be shipped out to the Aleutians and gets a short furlough. He calls home, begs his mother (my grandmother) to wire him money. The banks are closed. She borrows it from Mr. Catanzaro, the produce man at the store.

Bob gets his money, buys a United Airlines ticket. He is so visibly excited about going home that a soldier booked on an earlier flight trades tickets with him. It is a wicked twist of fate, because that plane crashes in the Rocky Mountains. Bob is dead.

NOTES

*By the 1940s, Bob's father has died and his mother Catherine "Kitty" Barrett is remarried to Ewald Curran.