By Rick Geffken
Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” is about George Bailey and his Christmas angel Clarence. “The Gift of the Magi” is an O. Henry story about the selfless exchanges of a husband and wife. A recent uncommon gift of love and remembrance in our Two River area by a real married couple virtually defines the Christmas spirit we all aspire to.
When Asa Sweeney was a young Cub Scout attending Middletown’s River Plaza School, David Barrett was one of his boyhood pals. Not best friends exactly, but as close as two young boys could be. “We were like the Little Rascals,” he recalls.
Like most 1970’s kids growing up in River Plaza, the boys spent their free time on the Swimming River crabbing, snapper fishing and swimming. In cooler seasons, they rode their bicycles everywhere, pretended to be explorers in the woods around town, and probably teased their fair share of little girls.
When school let out in June 1978, 12-year-old Asa spent the summer at home on Navesink River Road. David’s parents were separated; he went off to visit his mother in Texas. David Barrett never returned to River Plaza School that fall.
Asa Sweeney: “Things were different back then. All I remember is coming to school in September and our teacher made an announcement: ‘David Barrett is not coming back. He died in Texas. Everyone please open their books.’ There were no grief counselors at that time. But we all knew what happened.”
Sweeney grew up and went about his life. He married, had children, and was a boat dealer in Keyport for several years. He lost that business during the last recession when people’s recreational money went wanting.
Now 52 and a small business owner, Sweeney tells it this way: “In the fall this year, I went to Fair View Cemetery in Middletown a couple of times looking for my grandmother Anna Kennedy’s grave, but I couldn’t find it. So I thought I’d go to the office and get a map to help me. As I was talking to the woman there, she started writing down where my grandmother was, my aunt was, a friend was. Then I remembered David Barrett, who I used to ride bikes with around here. She gave me his location too.”
Scuffling around the gentle cemetery hills, Sweeney couldn’t find where Barrett was buried. The office had no record of a tombstone for Sweeney’s grammar school buddy. He was shocked. “How could he not have a tombstone?” It bothered him, although he’s quick to add “I’m not judging.”
A few days later, Sweeney returned to the cemetery office and asked if he could buy a tombstone for David. He was politely informed that he’d have to obtain the permission of the grave owners, listed as his friend’s grandparents from Little Silver. Sweeney discovered they had moved to North Carolina, but had passed away. A literal dead end. Sweeney, undaunted, began following a lead for David’s father in Arizona, but the elder Barrett had also died in the intervening years. He had no idea where in Texas his friend’s mother might have lived, her last name, or if she was even alive anymore. His frustration led to resolve.
Asa Sweeney gets serious as he remembers. “David’s parents were never married, it was a broken family right from the start. When he went to see his Mom in Texas over the summer, he and another kid found a shotgun in the house, were playing around and David was accidentally shot in the face and killed.”
Sweeney went back to the Fair View Cemetery staff with a proposition. “You know what? My friend has been out there for 38 years, and I want to give him a tombstone.” In early September, Sweeney put up a Facebook notice asking if anyone wanted to contribute toward a grave marker. Seven or eight people from River Plaza School responded with money, and a few others chipped in, too.
With about $1,200 in donations, Sweeney went to Uras Monuments in Middletown and was quoted $2,000 for an engraved granite stone. Here’s where this story takes a George Bailey turn.
Asa and Karen Sweeney have three sons, two are currently Boy Scouts, and the other is a college student in Boston. They have lots of expenses now and more coming up in the next several years. They talked over what to do about David Barrett’s unmarked grave. This ordinary middle class couple, faced with as many bills as their Toms River neighbors, decided to kick in the remaining $800 themselves for the grave marker. (Pause here while we contemplate this extraordinary generosity.)
When asked about his motivations, Sweeney grew silent, his rationale apparently never contemplated. Looking away for several seconds, eyes lowered, he reluctantly whispered, “I just thought it was the thing to do.” (Second pause.)
Ill at ease, Sweeney quickly changed the subject to the grave marker with David’s image. Sweeney got it from their third grade class picture, which his 81-year-old mother kept all these years. He was surprised to see himself standing right next to David Barrett in 1973.
Sweeny purchased an expensive gravestone this December, and put it on an empty plot of grass for a friend he hadn’t seen in 38 years. A friend he has only a few personal stories about, a boy who was in and out of his life before either of them could understand what life is about.
Bill Rockafellow, superintendent of the Fair View Cemetery marveled as he said “It’s very unusual for a nonfamily member to put up a gravestone; maybe it’s happened twice in 10 years that I can remember. As far as David Barrett’s gravesite is concerned, I’ve been here for 35 years and I’ve never seen anybody over there.”
Sweeney’s wife, Karen, who never knew David Barrett, provided the poetic inscription gracing his tombstone:
No Farewell Words Were Spoken, No Time to Say Goodbye,
You Were Gone Before We Knew It, And Only God Knows Why.
Forever Young, Forever in Our Hearts.
Your Fellow River Plaza Classmates
Merry Christmas, Asa, Merry Christmas. Somewhere a bell is ringing.
