Harold Walter George Barnett of Pelham Manor, N.Y., died on December 15, 2014. He was 98.
Mr. Barnett was born in Manhattan, N.Y., on August 13, 1916 and moved to New Rochelle, N.Y., at an early age. He was an only child. He graduated from Iona Grammar School in 1931 and Iona Preparatory School in 1935. He was a graduate of Fordham University, BS, Class of 1940.
Mr. Barnett was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Navy in 1941, shortly before World War II. He was commissioned as an Ensign and achieved the rank of Lieutenant by the end of his service in 1945. He was traveling in uniform in the NYC subway system when word came of the Pearl Harbor attack and people came up to him in the subway car and wished him well, the first way he heard about the start of the war. He served in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters. He was on a Patrol Craft ship, PC 462, doing convoy duty between Brazil and North Africa and was stationed at various times in Boston and Cape Ann in Massachusetts; in Hollywood, Florida; and in Panama, Bermuda and Cuba. He served in the Naval Intelligence branch in Seattle, Washington; he was stationed for a short time in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Later he was onboard a destroyer escort, USS Brackett DE-41, near the Marshall Islands, the Mariana Islands near Saipan, Taroa Island, and Australia. He was then transferred to a minesweeper in the North Atlantic right before the war ended.
After the war, Mr. Barnett worked a chemist in New York and New Jersey for more than 30 years with the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company in Manhattan, Montvale, N.J. and Horseheads, N.Y. After he retired from the A&P in 1982, he did consulting work for the Clairol Co. in Stamford, Conn.
He married Mary Theresa Harkins of Brooklyn, N.Y., whom he met at the A&P, on his birthday in 1949. They were married for 60 years; she died on September 9, 2009.
A Celebration of Harold's life will be held at the Pelham Funeral Home, 64 Lincoln Avenue from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM and 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM on Thursday, December 18th. There will be a requiem Mass on Friday, December 19th at 10:00 AM at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Pelham Manor. Internment will follow at Kensico Cemetery.