Dave Barrett was known as a devoted community servant and family man, according to his wife of 53 years, Kathy Barrett. The former Greenfield city councilman man passed away Nov. 25 after a lengthy battle with heart complications.
GREENFIELD — According to his wife, Dave Barrett was full of love, kindness and opinions.
“He was always pretty vocal. He always had an opinion,” Kathy Barrett recalled with a laugh.
At Greenfield City Council meetings, where Barrett was a longtime councilman, former Greenfield mayor Pat Elmore would always close out each meeting asking if there was anything else to share. Then she’d look right at him with a smile, “because she knew Dave always had the last word,” said his wife.
Barrett, a longtime community servant and friend to many, died on Nov. 25 at the age of 76 after a lengthy battle with heart complications.
The Greenfield man wore a number of hats throughout his life.
He played basketball for the former Greenfield High School, where he met his future wife, although the two didn’t start dating until after his three-year stint as a paratrooper in Vietnam.
Barrett would later become a small business owner, owning the NAPA Auto Parts store in Greenfield for many years until selling it to run a NAPA shop in Rushville. He started working for NAPA in 1972.
Working at the shop was good for his extroverted nature, said his wife, who said her husband rarely met a stranger.
“He loved working with the public. That was the best thing for him. He met so many people through his work there,” she said.
For years, Barrett played golf almost daily at Hawk’s Tail in Greenfield with a group of friends from high school. Even when he wasn’t feeling well due to his ongoing illness, he liked to tag along and ride in the golf cart with his friends.
He was so social, even a walk through Walmart was a welcome respite in his later years.
Barrett was a longtime board member at his church, Faith Lutheran in Greenfield, and served two terms on the Greenfield City Council from 1992-2001. He was also a longtime Hancock Food Pantry volunteer.
For years, he served as a board member and president at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Hancock County, where he coached a number of youth, including his two sons, David and Nicholas.
Barrett was always a huge supporter of the kids he coached there, said his wife, even years after they left the club. When some of the kids he coached went on to play basketball in high school and college, she and Barrett would travel the state to see them play. They’d also travel to watch some of them coach as adults.
Yet his own sons and granddaughters were the apple of his eye.
Kathy Barrett said her late husband was coaching or cheering at every game their sons ever had and was equally supportive of his granddaughters — Carson, 24, and Kendall, a freshman at Greenfield-Central High School.
As his health was failing, Barrett insisted on going to every one of Kendall’s home cross country meets this year, even if he only watched from the car. “He would say, ‘At least she knew I was there,’” his wife recalled.
Barrett also achieved his goal of being there to see Carson graduate from IUPUI in May.
“Family came first. Whatever his two granddaughters needed, they got,” said Kathy Barrett, his wife of 53 years.
The couple built a lifetime of memories in their half century together, she said, but among the happiest were the simple things, like playing Rack-o and Yahtzee each night at suppertime.
“He was the type who wanted to do everything for me,” she recalled, “so that all I had to worry about was the flowers and my yard and the kids. He loved taking care of us,” she said.
