Home
Connect Everyone in Southwest Texas, including Del Rio, Sonora, Eagle Pass, Brackettville, Rocksprings, Sanderson, Camp Wood, and Barksdale, Texas
Learn more about the value of advertising in Southwest Texas LIVE! in print and swtexaslive.com online -> Click Here!
Home
Del Rio veteran shaped by adversity of the worst kind, love of the best
December 15, 2008
By Bill Sontag
Feature Writer
At the family dining room table, Bobby Barrera reflects on and recounts the injuries that changed his life forever during a very brief tour in Vietnam. As the shirt suggests, Barrera is an unswerving spokesman for Disabled American Veterans. (LIVE! photo/Bill Sontag) (click image to enlarge)
A hazy, 39-year-old black-and-white photo is a snapshot of a robust Marine with a cigarette dangling from his right hand, and a determined – if somewhat menacing – countenance. Today, the hand is gone, along with the left arm, and so is the intimidation, replaced respectively by prosthesis and surpassing understanding.
Pfc. Bobby Barrera was no seasoned veteran of combat in Vietnam – only six weeks “in country” with Company C, 1st Battalion, 7th Marines – when a command-detonated 500-pound bomb exploded beneath the rumbling amphibious tractor (“amtrac”) on which he rode. The bomb was triggered by enemy in the jungle, waiting for the amtrac bearing one man – sniper Staff Sgt. Carlos Hathcock – to ride above the bomb, the third of five vehicles in the convoy.
Hathcock, with his 93 “confirmed kills,” wore a daredevil symbol of his reputation in his headgear, making him an easily identified, marked man with an enemy’s lucrative bounty on his head. “White Feather” Hathcock flaunted his status at his enemies and they got him. “They were watching us,” Barrera said, Thursday (Nov. 13, 2008).
[BARRERA_FAMILY]
The Barrera family – closely knit and supportive – demonstrate great pride in each other’s accomplishments. They are, from left, son Aldo, daughter Karla, Maricelia and Bobby. In front is grandson Alejandro, 5. (LIVE! photo/Bill Sontag) (click image to enlarge)
The huge bomb ruptured and ignited the amtrac’s fuel cells, enveloping and sending Barrera, Hathcock and six other Marines into sheets of flame in which their uniforms and flesh became part of the inferno.
“All of us got burned over 40-57 percent of our bodies. But we all walked to the helicopter that came to pick us up, landing just about 60 yards from the burning track,” Barrera recalled. He looked at his fellow Marines and was struck by the ghastly appearance of their exposed skin, hanging, sagging away from charred uniforms, like ill-fitting latex gloves.
“The enemy had started shooting at us, and the other Marines returned fire while we boarded the helicopter, and were flown to the USS Repose, a hospital ship in Da Nang Harbor,” Barrera said. From the Repose, things went from horrific to worse, to better again for Barrera, and now he’s in a position to pave a similar path for American veterans everywhere.
[BARRERA_BEFORE]
A tough-looking Marine taking a snapshot break from infantry training at Camp Pendleton, Calif., June 1969, is the “before” image of Bobby Barrera. Three months later, Barrera was critically burned over 40 percent of his once-robust body, and in for years of excruciating treatments and surgical repairs. (Contributed photo/Bobby Barrera) (click image to enlarge)
He passed the 60-year milestone in June, and is reflective upon a lifetime of opportunity that has unfolded beneath his drive and determination since that horrific day, September 16 (Dieciseis de septiembre), 1960. Then, as his life was momentarily reduced to char, on the other side of the world, friends and family back in Del Rio were lifting cold ones to commemorate Padre Hidalgo’s 1810 “Grito” for Mexico’s independence from Spain.
Fellow Del Rio Marine Pat Dugan calls the area where Barrera nearly lost his life “one of the toughest areas of combat in Vietnam. It was called ‘the Arizona Territory’ because it was very dangerous, a free fire zone with no rules,” said Dugan, Thursday (Nov. 26).
Barrera’s arrival in Vietnam had followed a quickie wedding to the Marine Corps with no honeymoon, completing infantry training at Camp Pendleton, Calif., then advanced infantry training. “Graduation was at 6 p.m., and by midnight I was on a plane – the Flying Tigers – enroute to Alaska, Okinawa, Japan, and then on Continental to Da Nang. On Continental they treated us like royalty, like it might be our last trip, and, for some, I’m sure it was.”
Plunked down at Da Nang Air Base, the young Marine was undaunted. “Not until I got to where my unit was, and that was when it hit me. The armory was closed for the night, so I wasn’t issued a weapon, so we went to bunkers as we were told to when we heard firing. Finally, a sergeant came around and told us it was friendly artillery, not incoming rounds.”
Capable of plowing through ocean surfs for beach landings, the amphibious tracked vehicle was the transportation of choice and necessity when Charley Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Marines came ashore at Da Nang during the Vietnam War. Barrera was in a convoy of five similar “amtracs” when a 500-pound bomb blew up, spewing fire from fuel tanks over the eight men riding atop the vehicle. (Contributed photo/Bobby Barrera) (click image to enlarge)
Only six weeks later, in unspeakable pain aboard the Repose, Barrera began his first round of narcotics to dull the agony, then was airlifted to a two-day hospital visit for more stabilization in Japan. “They had us pretty drugged up, so I don’t remember much about Japan except a nurse holding a cigarette for me to smoke at the airport,” Barrera said.
Next, a C-130 Hercules cargo and transport ship launched from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, stopping off in San Antonio long enough to pick up a team of physicians, nurses and technicians from the prestigious burn unit of Brooke Army Medical Center. (For more perspectives on this world-renowned facility, listen to this 2006 National Public Radio broadcast report, at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5570807)
[BARRERA_DRESS-BLUESIII]
Col. Phil Torres, representing the Marine Corps commandant, presents Barrera with his first set of dress uniform components, Tuesday (Nov. 9, 1999), as the veteran received the Leaders in Furthering Education (LIFE) Presidential Unsung Hero Award. The “blues” were a motivating factor in Barrera’s enlistment, but they had to be purchased. His private first class salary prohibited it. “Bobby, here’s your blues,” thundered Torres, 30 years later. (Contributed photo/DAV Magazine) (click image to enlarge)
Despite the life-saving treatments of physicians, compassionate care by superlative staff and surgeries that restored his face and use of one arm, his arrival at BAMC marked the beginning of levels of pain that not even the bomb explosion in Vietnam could match. Comparing his pain level aboard the Repose with his months of therapy at BAMC, Barrera commented, “The Navy was much more generous with their drugs for pain than the Army – a big, big difference.”
In the burn center, he and others with similar injuries were introduced – and reintroduced daily – to the Hubbard Tank, a T-shaped stainless steel tub much like a whirlpool bath. Unlike the whirlpool that eases stiff muscles of athletes, the Hubbard tank was a therapeutic form of torture. Technicians and nurses submerged him and “they hold you down and scrub your wounds, and then, back in bed they applied what they called ‘the butter,’” said Barrera, an ointment with restorative and therapeutic qualities, but little relief from the ever-present pain.
The tank-and-butter treatments continued daily for about 40 days, Barrera remembered, followed by three or four flights – twice a day, each day and still in great pain – to Brooke Army Medical Center for hyperbaric chamber sessions to infuse the wounds with oxygen, accelerating their healing.
Amid veterans, families, and members of all U.S. armed forces, Barrera delivers the keynote address at the Veterans Day Program at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills, Calif. The 2006 program also featured the Aztec Skydiving Team and the Notre Dame Irish Knight Marching Band. (Contributed photo/Bobby Barrera) (click image to enlarge)
Then he sustained surgeries to amputate his left arm because of infection by phycomycoses, water molds that infected wounds and could not be treated. “It’s like gangrene, only much faster, and all they can do is amputate,” Barrera explained. More amputations followed when the infections spread, then more surgeries created ears and lips, both burned off his face by the flames, and finally fittings for his right “arm” prosthesis. “I call it my hook, and sometimes, like some people who lose their glasses, I forget where I took it off, and have to go looking,” Barrera said, chuckling.
“I don’t know if I could go through this again. It was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, obviously,” Barrera said. “Most of the survivors – including me – said we’d always carry a gun, and if we ever got burned another time, we would just shoot ourselves, rather than ever go through that again.”
Discharged from the Marine Corps in September 1970, Barrera became a patient of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Late that month, the doctors gave him leave to come home for first time for from BAMC for the holiday season. His dad, Indalecio Barrera, Del Rio’s police chief, and his mom, Elia Barrera were his support system.
“It was overwhelming relief for my parents to know that I was going to survive, but, for me, coming home was a terrible experience. I was coming home a different person. I didn’t want anyone to see me that way,” Barrera said. His lips had not been reconstructed with grafts yet, and his amputations worsened the matter. He wanted to remain cloistered, but friends and family ignored his fears and came to visit anyway. “That was the first major hurdle I had to overcome, and they made that happen for me.”
In 1973, Barrera had been through 32 surgeries, and he opted out of any more. “I came back to Del Rio … stayed here, and said, ‘No more of this,’” Barrera said. Only four blocks from his uncle’s house on West 6th Street, Barrera saw a beautiful young woman he wanted to meet, so he struggled for an opening line. Maricelia Marin owned a pet Capuchin, native to Central and South America, so Barrera struggled for an opening line, one that still makes the couple blush: “Can you show me your monkey?”
“We started going steady in November 1973. Despite my injuries, she made me feel very comfortable, so we got married in April 1974 at Saint Joseph’s Church. The turning point in my life was when I married Maricelia. She gave direction to my life,” Barrera said.
[BARRERA_KERRY]
Barrera receives a warm hug, Feb. 23, from Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) following Barrera’s introduction during Kerry’s visit to Sul Ross University while campaigning for now-President-elect Barrack Obama. The audience in the packed campus auditorium gave both Barrera and Kerry a standing ovation as the senator approached the podium, pausing for the moment. (LIVE! file photo/Bill Sontag) (click image to enlarge)
Two years later, his sister-in-law, Vangie, graduated from Del Rio High School and was headed for college, provoking Barrera to consider another chance for a degree from Saint Mary’s University. With his single, prosthetic arm, Barrera knew he’d not be able to turn book pages, hold notebooks still for writing. Maricelia attended classes with him – carrying his books, turning their pages, and steadying the notepaper – and she helped her husband study. “When I got my bachelor’s degree [1978, psychology], under my name I had hers written there, too,” Barrera said. “She has always given me the right balance of her love, support, and a swift kick in the butt when I most need it.”
For five years, Barrera taught Spanish and English at Del Rio High School, eventually pestering administrators long enough to add psychology to the curriculum, with him as instructor, of course. “By that time, I earned a Master of Education at Sul Ross [Alpine], in guidance and counseling, and was working part time with the Juvenile Probation Department of the 63rd Judicial District under Judge George Thurmond.” His work with youthful offenders began as a volunteer, then part time, and finally full time during which time he created the community service program for the department.
When Laughlin Air Force Base opened a Family Support Center, Barrera became its first director within the Mission Support Squadron, commanded by Col. Sidney Hirschberg. Beginning with an office of three in 1989, and ending his career there in October 1997 with a staff of 13, Barrera built the services to military personnel and their families to include financial management, answering needs before and after deployments, vocational counseling and an employment program for spouses, transition services from active duty to civilian life upon separation from service, and a base relocation program for transferees.
Barrera got involved with the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) organization while working at Laughlin, and, in 1997, he was accorded the Air Force Outstanding Federal Employee with Disabilities award, followed the next year with the DAV award, Outstanding Disabled Veteran of the Year. Since then, Barrera has acquired leadership opportunities as both educator and mentor, traveling often, and addressing hundreds of youth groups, civic clubs, military audiences and veterans organizations across the United States.
His theme for most of those is “The Four S’s of Life,” composed in Barrera’s private moments of reflection, and refined with his training and experience in psychology. They elaborate, he says, on the need within each individual facing any of life’s challenges to seek support, keep a sense of humor, maintain a spiritual relationship with God, and nourish a keen sense of self. Since the 1998 DAV award, Barrera has taught the lessons each year at “Leadership V.A..” “They’re usually 70 or 80 people from the top leadership positions – the cream of the crop, really – of the Veterans Administration: physicians, financial officers, medical division chiefs, researchers and research administrators.
Now Barrera serves as DAV senior vice commander, and is in line to be nominated for the national commander’s position at the DAV National Convention in Denver, August 2009. “If I get it, that will mean almost non-stop traveling,” Barrera said, notwithstanding the pleasure and privilege of gaining the slot. For more about the DAV, see www.dav.org.
Barrera sees abundant opportunity to continue improvements in respect accorded to veterans and treatments afforded to the wounded. “In the past, especially with World War II and Korean War veterans, there was a lot of need for improvement in health care. But in the last 10 years, there have been dramatic improvements. Now our veterans usually rate their satisfaction with VA hospitals above private for-profit institutions,” Barrera said. For more about the Department of Veterans Affairs, see www.va.gov.
He also sees important progress in how returning veterans are perceived by the American public. “I’m always emphasizing that when the Vietnam veteran returned, they didn’t receive a welcome home or the respect and gratitude of their country. Now, I see that kind of treatment not happening – thankfully – to our veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. People must learn how to separate their feelings about the war from their feelings about the warrior!”
No hay comentarios.:
Publicar un comentario