Sailor's life short, but full

By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer

The sailor killed in a skydiving accident Sunday was a "go-getter" who loved to help children, his mother said yesterday.

Linda Spence said her son, 24-year-old Jeremy M. Barrett, a Navy diver stationed at Pearl Harbor, had always been an active young man. He grew up in Winfield, Iowa, a small farm town with only one school for everyone.

As a teenager he volunteered with his community's Big Brothers/Big Sisters program, his mother said. Even after he had joined the Navy, he often found time to work with children, both in Florida and in Hawai'i.

"He just really loved kids," she said. "At one point after he had been in the Navy for a while, he said he may not ever be interested in getting married, but he might like to adopt someone."

When he was 16, Barrett discovered motocross racing and he and his younger brother would race on weekends. Barrett took a few spills along the way, said his mother, who videotaped their Saturday night races.

"We took a few trips to the hospital," Spence said. "He had a steel plate in his leg and a screw in his foot. He had broken both wrists and had a massive concussion. And it didn't stop him."

He took his first parachute jump the summer after he graduated from high school in 1999. His mother was there, video camera in hand. He had wanted her to jump with him and she said no.

"I still remember his expression walking across the field afterward," she said. "It was a natural high. I don't think his feet touched the ground."

Barrett, who had become an experienced jumper, got into trouble Sunday over Dillingham Airfield. For unknown reasons, he deployed his main chute too low — between 1,500 and 2,000 feet — and experienced a line malfunction. One of the lines wrapped over the top of the parachute.

By the time he had jettisoned his main chute and released his backup, he was too low for it to catch the air.

His mother said he was accustomed to dangerous situations. A Navy diver, he did underwater welding and helped raise the USS Monitor from a depth of 230 feet.

"From what I heard, he was working on the chute the whole way down," Spence said. "He was trying to get it right and do what he was trained to do. It just didn't work."

The toughest part is knowing he ran out of time, she said.

"I heard that if it was a couple of seconds sooner, he would still be with us," she said.

Spence spent much of yesterday scanning photographs of her son into a computer. She is making a DVD to play at his funeral.

He will be buried in a cemetery near the family home in Winfield. Spence can see it across a field and a creek.

"We have a cemetery behind our house," she said. "We will be able to look out our back window and know he is with us."

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8012.