Barrett, Hal

Harold "Hal" F. Barrett, Jr. was born in Dayton, OH on December 13, 1919, to Harold F. Barrett, Sr. and Carolyn ("Carrie") Kaesemann. Young Barrett's first marriage was to Grace Ethel Dressler in 1946. They had two children, Margaret Ann and Paul Harold. His second marriage was to Kathryn Mae Lohrentz in 1969. He gained two stepchildren, William H. Ehrstine and Gale Ann Worman. As of 1996, he had five grandchildren.

Barrett's father was a sheet-metal contractor who became a homebuilder, but a Depression bank failure closed his father's business in 1931, and stripped him of all of his business and real estate overnight. He packed up the family, which included 12 year old Hal, and began a desperate odyssey through the West in search of work. In the next few years, the family lived in Wichita, KS; Saline, KS; and Galva, KS, where the senior Barrett found work in an oil drilling equipment company as day shift bookkeeper and night shift machinist.

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