#065 Barney Cadena

SSGT Barney Cadena saw heavy action in Vietnam and, as a result, suffered many problems that he fought through. He was a very good many. One memory that MGySgt (Ret) Glenn Denton has of Barney includes a story about dress blues. Not all Marines had dress blues, but Barney had had embassy duty. One day, Barney entered the Bakersfield Marine Corp Recruiting Station wanting to sell his dress blues, which included all of his ribbons and awards. Glenn saw that both of them had the same ribbons from Vietnam. Glen purchased the dress blues and placed the ribbons in a safe place. Twenty-five years later, Glenn had started Camp Hamilton and Barney had started a thrift store with all proceeds going to veterans issues. The store was doing very well and Barney was very active in the veterans community. One weekend, Barney attended a Camp Hamilton function with his family. Glenn thought about those ribbons on the dress blue uniform, went home, and searched and searched until he found those ribbons to return to Barney. When Glenn returned to the camp, he called formation and re-presented the ribbons. Barney’s tree is a bottle tree. The leaves on the tree is like candy to all the animals at Camp Hamilton.