Gerrard Barnes, left, and Bruce Barker worked together with the Osan High School girls basketball team in the late 1990s. Barnes, 73, died after a long battle with cancer earlier this week. (Dave Ornauer/Stars and Stripes)
Even in the waning moments of his life, Gerrard Barnes continued to remain involved in the vocation that defined his life – basketball.
Barnes sat with his daughter, Salena, at his home in Yigo, near Andersen Air Force Base in northern Guam, watching the NBA playoffs on TV shortly before he died Tuesday morning.
“Right to the very end,” he stayed involved with basketball, Salena Barnes said of her father, who passed away at age 73 after a long battle with cancer.
Until he retired late last year, he was the fitness center director at Andersen for about three decades, following a 25-year career in Air Force security forces, from which he retired as a senior master sergeant.
Barnes played basketball for the Air Force and the U.S. Armed Forces – even earning an Olympic team tryout in 1976 – and coached Pacific Air Forces champion teams three times in the 1980s.
“He had two loves in his life, the Air Force and basketball,” said Salena Barnes, who played for her father when he was assistant coach of Osan High School’s girls team in the late 1990s.
“Those things put together brought him so much joy. He loved developing relationships and helping people, how he helped them build confidence and understand the gifts that they had,” Salena Barnes said.
Originally from Elizabeth City, N.C., Barnes enlisted in the Air Force in the early 1970s and was assigned to just about every Pacific Air Forces base that ever existed.
After his playing days ended, Barnes coached interservice teams in Korea to PACAF tournament championships in 1983, ’86 and ’87. He was first assigned to Andersen in the late 1980s and that’s where he ended up living and working most of his life.
In addition to coaching and playing, Barnes also helped design the state-of-the-art fitness centers at Osan and Kunsan air bases in South Korea and Andersen’s Coral Reef sports and fitness center, which opened in 2005. “He was so proud of that,” Salena Barnes said.
Gerrard Barnes was a player for the Hickam Air Force Base Flyers base team in 1976 and tried out for the U.S. Olympic team that year. (Salena Barnes)
Barnes’ tenure at Andersen was interrupted twice by two-year stints as fitness-center director at Osan in the late 1990s, where he assisted Bruce Barker with the high school team, and at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, in the mid-2000s.
In all, his days as a player, coach and fitness center director were about serving people, his daughter said. “He loved the service and he loved sports,” Salena Barnes said.
Barnes is survived by his wife Suk-cha, his four children Tanisha (49), Salena (42), Jordan (25) and Jason (23), and two grandchildren, Mecah Scribner (18) and Karinn Neal (16).
Funeral services are set for May 25 at Our Lady of Peace Memorial Gardens in Barrigada, Guam.
