07/20/2024
Dr. Jerry A. Barnett MD, age 97, of West Des Moines, Iowa passed away on Saturday, July 20, 2024.
A visitation for Jerry will be held Thursday, July 25, 2024, at 10:00 AM at McLaren’s Resthaven Chapel & Mortuary & Resthaven Cemetery, 801 19th St, West Des Moines, Iowa 50265, followed by a funeral ceremony at 11:00 AM.
Dr. Jerry A. Barnett, MD, was born December 9, 1926, at home near Knoxville, Iowa, the youngest of ten children (including two sets of twins) of a coal mining family. He attended Liberty School, a two-room country school that had once been an office for a coal camp. He graduated from Knoxville High School in 1944 and was inducted into the National Honor Society.
After high school, he dutifully joined the Army and became a part of the 508th 82nd Paratroopers. He was a radioman, obtained pathfinder status, and was deployed to Germany where for a time, he was part of 5 Star General Eisenhower’s Honor Guard at Frankfurt, Germany’s Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF). He continued his military service after the war as a member of the Iowa National Guard 34th Red Bull.
After returning home, Jerry worked as an orderly while attending Central College in Pella, Iowa. He met his wife, Lucille Knutson, at the VA hospital in Knoxville where she was working as a registered nurse. Lucy and Jerry married in 1949 and moved to Des Moines where he attained his pharmacy degree from Drake University and was a member of Kappa Psi Pharmacy Fraternity. He worked as a pharmacist at Baker’s Drug Store on the Knoxville city square. Jerry related once that he mostly worked as a “soda jerk,” which was not what he desired.
Jerry and Lucy moved again, now with three children, to Iowa City where he began medical school at the University of Iowa. A fourth child was added to the family while he attended medical school living in half of a Quonset hut in Finkbine Park, where Carver Hawkeye Arena is now located. As he attended medical school, he picked up various odd jobs, one being a construction worker on the then-newly built Coralville Dam.
Jerry became a medical doctor and accepted a residency in anesthesiology through the VA and a practicum at the University of Iowa.
After obtaining his anesthesiology specialty, he provided his expertise at Mercy and Lutheran Hospitals. Now a family of seven with a fifth child added during his residency, they are located to West Des Moines. Jerry noted at the time that he was the first anesthesiologist to live in West Des Moines, which essentially stopped around Ashworth Road and 22nd Street.
After retirement, Lucy and Jerry spent many winters living in Honolulu. Jerry dedicated many volunteer hours as a docent for Arizona Memorial, Punchbowl Cemetery, Battleship Missouri, and Pacific Aviation Museum. Jerry was also an avid hunter of game and morel mushrooms.
As a child, Jerry was in a group called the Sunset Trail Yodelers, which included his older twin siblings, Bob and Betsy. Jerry was introduced as “Little Brother, Jerry.” He played rhythm bones or rattle bones, which he made from cow ribs when he was six. He used those same bones until his last week of life. The Sunset Trail Yodelers played on KRNT radio and appeared on the KRNT stage in Des Moines, where he met a young Ronald Reagan, a sportscaster at the time for KRNT. They had been invited to play at the annual Buxton, IA coal mining reunions.
Years later, he became the National 1997 Champ of the Rhythm Bones at the Bob Everhart Old Time Country Music Festival. This qualified him and his brother,
Bob, to progress on to the world stage in Austria, where Jerry became the 1998 world champion. This was a proud accomplishment for Jerry, in that his automobile license plate read: “WRL CHMP.”
Jerry and Lucy made exploring the world a priority and visited all seven continents where Jerry joyfully shared his rattle-bone talent around the world.
Jerry is survived by his wife, Lucy (Knutson), daughters Muriel (Gary) Jarvis, and Colette, and sons Jerry (Denise), Ron, and Charles, five grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.
Jerry is predeceased by his parents, John Myrl Barnett and Sarah (Moline), his nine siblings, and grandson, Brett Jarvis.
The family requests that memorial donations be directed to Melanoma Research, American Cancer Society. Checks can be sent to the American Cancer Society, PO Box 6704, Hagerston, MD 21741. Include “Melanoma research” in the memo line.