Sad news this week. Col. William Barber passed away on April 19. If
you ever met Bill Barber, consider yourself lucky. If you knew him,
consider yourself honored. If he was a friend, consider yourself
privileged.
Bill was a friend and a mentor for many years and supported me every
time I ran, which was early and often. It sounds like a cliche straight
out of Reader's Digest, but Bill Barber really was one of the most
extraordinary people I've ever met.
The official file reads something like this: "William E. Barber, Col.,
USMC (Ret.) -- career officer who served with honor in World War II,
Korea and Vietnam. One of the best known and most respected Korean War
veterans, Col. Barber received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his
extraordinary heroism at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir in 1950."
But as remarkable as his record of military service was, it just
doesn't tell you enough about Bill Barber.
He was a true Southern gentleman, born in West Liberty, Ky. in 1919,
though he looked and sounded much younger than his years.
When you're training to be a military officer, you spend a lot of time
studying something called "command presence." To a large degree, it's
what makes a leader a leader, but it's hard to define. It's a certain
something in how someone looks and sounds and acts that makes other
people willing to follow them.
I've had the privilege of chatting it up with presidents, generals,
billionaires and a veritable boatload of big shots -- from Mickey Mantle
to Maggie Thatcher. Very impressive, but Bill Barber had more command
presence than all of them combined.
The one thing for which Bill Barber had no talent whatsoever was
talking about himself, which is typical of combat veterans. People who
have a lot of stories about what they did in the war usually didn't do
much. And people who saw and did the things that no one should ever see
or do usually have no stories to tell. Bill Barber followed that model,
almost to a fault.
Ironically, in Bill's case, it didn't matter. If Bill Barber had spent
his life running a small coffee shop in the smallest town in Kentucky,
instead of being one of the most respected military veterans in our
history, everyone who met him would be just as bowled over. It wasn't
Bill's rank or his medals that made people want to follow him. It was
Bill. When people run across his name in the history books now and
forever, they won't find much under "Bill Barber," but they'll find
plenty under "Col. William E. Barber, USMC."
