Bob Barrett, Military Aide and Chief of Staff to Gerald R. Ford, Dies at 83

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla., Jan. 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Bob Barrett, who served as military aide to President Gerald Ford and chief of staff after he left office, died January 11th of Covid-19 related complications in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Barrett was eighty- three years old.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, August 13, 1938, Robert E. Barrett went to C.W. Post where he received a full athletic scholarship to play football. Later in life with his generosity of spirit, Bob endowed a scholarship at his alma mater that is now Long Island University Post. After college he joined the U.S. Army at twenty-five years of age just as America's involvement in Vietnam escalated. Between his two tours in country during the war, the Army sent Barrett to Syracuse University for a master's degree in communication. At the end of his second tour in Vietnam, with a promotion from captain to major, Barrett was assigned to the United States Army War College as its Public Affairs and Communications officer. Six months into a two-year assignment, he received a call from the White House. It was July 10, 1974, the day before news broke of President Nixon's Watergate scandal. Barrett was flown to San Clemente, the "Western White House," under consideration to become Nixon's military aide?the man whose chief responsibility was to carry the nuclear "football," a briefcase that harbored the potential trigger for destruction of planet Earth.

One month later, Nixon left office and Gerald Ford became the thirty-eighth president of the U.S. Within days Ford invited Barrett into the Oval Office and officially offered him the position of military aide, beginning a two-and-a-half-decade close, personal relationship between Barrett and the Ford family. Over the next twenty-five plus years Barrett played a crucial role in developing the Gerald R. Ford Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan; the Ford Presidential Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan; and the Betty Ford Center for drug and alcohol rehabilitation in Rancho Mirage, California.

An avid golfer, Barrett helped organize the annual Jerry Ford Invitational Pro-Am Golf Tournament in Vail, Colorado, with Ford's close friend, Jack Nicklaus. A lover of jokes and quite a wit himself, Barrett assisted with the 1986 Humor and the Presidency Symposium at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, dealing with humor as commentary on politics. Barrett helped assemble an all-star cast of comedians, including Chevy Chase, Art Buchwald, and Pat Paulson, and arranged television and media access to the event, including a 1987 movie, "Humor and the Presidency," available through Turner Classics. For Ford's Washington, D.C. funeral service in 2006, Barrett served as a pall bearer with Henry Kissinger, Bob Dole, and Dick Cheney, among other nationally prominent political figures.

He is survived by his wife Eleanor Martino, his son Nils Barrett and his wife Sharla Barrett, his daughter Kristy Barrett Wylie and her husband Arun Wylie, and grandchildren Olivia, Paige, and Henry Hawk.

A memorial service is being scheduled, location and date to be announced.

Obit written by Frederick Richardson. Submitted by friend of the family, Robert Halmi.

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SOURCE Robert Halmi