Melissa Rose Barnes was born on November 28, 1974, in Whittier, California.  In May 1992 she joined the Navy and began her naval service as a corpsman at the Naval Hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia.  She later chose to change her rate and received communications training.  In November 1997 she left the Navy to try something else.  However, she missed the military and rejoined the Navy in March 1999 and became a yeoman assigned to the Telecommunications Center at the Pentagon in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. 

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Barnes was at her Pentagon duty station chatting on the phone making weekend liberty plans with one of her girlfriends across the Potomac at the Washington Navy Yard.  The girlfriend put Barnes on hold to take another call and when she came back the line was dead.  American Airlines Flight 77 had slammed into the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m. killing 125 people in the Pentagon, including Melissa Barnes.  Tragically, she was within several weeks of being transferred to her first sea duty assignment.  Her sister said Barnes “Was proud to serve her country and proud to wear her uniform.  If she had lived, she would have been a lifer.”  Her sister also described Barnes as the family clown who “Would make you die laughing.  She was really outgoing and bubbly, always up for a good time.”  Concerning Barnes, her mother said “She was a person not easy to forget.  So beautiful, so vibrant.  You could not ignore her.”

Submitted by CDR Roy A. Mosteller, USNR (Ret)