Mar 8, 2007
Back to school
NCHS welcomes teacher after tour of duty in Iraq
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Anyone who believes chivalry is dead hasn't met Tony Barnett.
A father, husband, New Canaan High School teacher, volunteer firefighter and returning warrior from Iraq, the 32-year-old Hamden resident lives his life with three things in mind — family, community, country.
After a year-long tour of duty dodging bullets and reconstructing vital services in the Middle East, he returned to civilian life and his portable physics classroom — at least for now — last month. He has worked at the high school since 2003.
“We're so proud of him,” NCHS Principal Tony Pavia told the
Advertiser yesterday, “that he served our country. And we're very thankful that he returned safe and sound to us.”
Calling him a “gentle giant,” Mr. Pavia said the Navy lieutenant commander's departure brought the war home for the community's teachers and students. “He is a very soft-spoken, very gentle, very kind man and I think that's what his students are most impressed with. And they really were affected when he left.”
Going on 11 years with the Navy and currently in the reserves, Mr. Barnett has toured the Caribbean, South Korea and other parts of the Middle East.
“I've been trying to get to Europe,” he said with a laugh during an afternoon interview last week, “but they won't send me. I'll volunteer for Italy.”
As a Mideast vet, the science teacher had an of idea what to expect. But when he got his latest orders in January, he had some new reservations — an infant son, Brendan, now two years old, and his wife of nine years, Colleen.
“When I was over there before I was single and young,” he said. “No family ties, nothing but myself to worry about.”
Nevertheless, he responded to the seven-days-notice call of duty — originally for Afghanistan — with the same motivation and tenacity with which he lives the rest of his life.
“Mr. Barnett is a great teacher who has done just about every interesting thing you can think of,” then-senior Marques Word wrote in a farewell issue of the NCHS newspaper, the
Courant, last February.
The son of a Naval officer and the grandson of a World War II merchant marine, Tony Barnett was born for service and adventure.
“ 'I can't do it' is not a phrase in my vocabulary,” he said. “The Navy said I couldn't be a diver because of my eyesight. Well, I became a civilian diver, then I became an instructor, then I started doing deep diving with mixed gases. They said no, but I found an avenue to pursue my dream. I'm one of the first people who run into a burning building while people are running out. They said I couldn't really do it with glasses. Well, I said, ʻYou can't see anyway inside a burning building because it's all foggy and smoky.' So I did that.”
Tony Barnett enrolled in the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at age 17 and opted upon graduation to enter into active duty. With a specialty in mine warfare, he spent the next three years seeking and neutralizing explosives on a minesweeper.
“It was a job,” he said about his time at sea and in Iraq. “You woke up, you did your job, you came back home, prepared for the next day. On a ship, the same thing. You did your job, you stood your watch, you went to bed, and it all started again.”
In Iraq, however, Mr. Barnett had a slightly different experience, one that included dodging bullets sent raining over walls by insurgents and deciphering the “giant puzzle” created by ethnic and religious divisions within the Middle East.
Assigned to the 354th Army Civil Affairs Brigade, which is responsible for reconstruction and planning for central services such as sewer, water, electricity and sanitation, the physics teacher bounced from training Iraqi firefighters, to obtaining supplies for the Iraqi Emergency Response Unit, to assembling information from every sector of the country with the Joint Operations Center.
From there — “where the actual war is pretty much planned from,” he said — Lt. Cmdr. Barnett gathered information from all regions of Iraq and was therefore able to see the “big picture.” It gave him a perspective few military personnel receive, one which enabled him to distinguish the heavily publicized violence from the lesser-reported progress.
“There's a lot you're not hearing about,” he said, referring to the mainstream media's coverage of “a 30-square mile” area of Iraq while “amazing progress” is occurring throughout.
While outlets such as
The New York Times and CNN blast daily suicide bombings and bloody marketplace pictures, the Naval officer said he and his comrades are building banks, laying infrastructure, establishing construction schools for men and seamstress schools for women, and — despite reports of constant blackouts in Baghdad — providing electricity to more people who can now afford to buy refrigerators.
With the help of agricultural projects, he added, the region harvested its largest crop of dates in memory last year (not exactly a breaking news story, he pointed out), and veterinarians have been able to keep their livestock healthy and profitable.
“Stuff like that we're doing but no one's really hearing about,” Mr. Barnett said. “Good news like that doesn't sell papers or get ratings.”
Mr. Barnett worries that the negative media attention — as well as the back-and-forth by politicians — hurts the morale of the troops, the ability of the American people to support or take any “ownership” of the war, and the world's perception of the mission.
“Americans forget that everybody watches American media, American news. And if you have a young Arab who listens to CNN or BBC and they hear all these protests of Americans supporting the war, they go, ʻHoly cow, how are they going to help me?' So absolutely there's an effect.”
“It's frustrated the heck out of me hearing ʻI support the troops but I don't support the war,' ” he added. “We carry the mission out, so how can you support us but not support what weʼre doing? I think from the get-go what we're trying to do over there wasn't communicated to the American people. And just now is it actually getting communicated, because if the guys fighting this war are volunteering to go back for third and fourth tours, and the American people are against it, there's a disconnect there. The guys being (put) in harm's way believe in it, so the communication between the populous in general has to get much better.”
Mr. Pavia, who has written several books about local people involved in World War II, said much of the reason the U.S. won that conflict was due to a uniform sacrifice — by military volunteers from all walks of life and by civilians who pitched in any way they could.
The war in Iraq, Mr. Pavia said, “is not shared equally by the public, and that's not fair. It's an unsettling reality that the cost of the war is being borne by a select few. The public hasn't been called upon to make any sacrifices.”
One thing he would like American citizens to understand, Mr. Barnett said, is that in a world of globalization, an unstable region or a helping hand can effect a country half a world away.
“I believe in three things,” he said. “Taking care of my family, my community and my country. My family cannot live the life they are living if they're not free and their rights are protected. My community can't function unless their rights are protected. So someone's got to answer the call ... because if a whole bunch of folks do nothing then we have no rights.”
“Call it idealistic,” he added, “but that's what I believe in.”
Now safe at home (although he admittedly still scans rooftops, reaches for his sidearm when it isn't there, and calculates the distance and danger of loud noises), Mr. Barnett has taken a year off from coaching throwing for the NCHS track team in order to reconnect with his family.
When free, he enjoys camping, freshwater fishing, taking his son to the park, working on his house and visiting the shooting range — something he calls “relaxing and peaceful” because it is “just you and that piece of paper.”
In the true white knight fashion, he attributes most of his success to his wife, without whom he said “I couldn't have done half the stuff I've done in my life.”
Tony Barnett currently spends one weekend a month as a Navy policeman in Newport, R.I., but he may be summoned again in the next couple of years for Operation Enduring Freedom.
Not one to complain, however, he aims to remain in the military until retirement — or, he specified, “until they throw me out.”
“I enjoy wearing the uniform,” he said. “I enjoy wearing the frog green. I enjoy what we stand for and what we do.”
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