January 26, 1953 ~ July 5, 2020
David Thane Barron was born, 3 months premature, to Clara and Roy Barron, of Pampa and Fort Worth, Texas. He was a traveler at heart, arriving in Tahoka, Texas while his father was on the road as a salesman. He spent his first month of life wrapped in a blanket on the wood-stove, taking milk by the eye dropper. His body held onto life much longer than any doctor predicted in the beginning, middle, or end. He was, in many ways, a living miracle.
David was the fourth of seven children born living, and he never forgot the sister he didn’t meet, Julie, named for his mom’s mom, Julia. Nor did he forget her husband, “Grandpa Davis,” who was born of an indigenous woman and a cowboy, who was orphaned on a reservation in North Dakota by smallpox, and who traveled down by train to his father’s family in the panhandle of Texas. David retold that story and unconsciously retraced its journey in his lifetime travels— living in Minot, North Dakota before moving home to Oklahoma for his final days.
Strong-willed and perceptive, David understood life in the South and the North. He built resilience in Alaska from the time of his first memories, but he always went back south, and he graduated high school in Memphis, Texas in 1972. After his northern wife stacked wood in an orderly way at their home in Conroe, Texas, he patiently explained to her that she couldn’t “do it that way here,” and gestured instead to the wood he’d sprawled all around the yard. Previously relaxing on the deck, he’d heard a certain sound coming from her woodpile. He killed the water moccasin with a shovel and rearranged the wood.
He learned his career skill from his father and worked for decades in the family business with his brother Steven in the sales and setting of mobile home. They worked in many places, staying in the “middle ground” of the PNW for years.
David was twice married, fathered three biological children, grandfathered eight, and took care of many others. He is survived by former wives Deborah Morgan and Pauline Akhi-Gbade, by his children and their families: Angela “Nikki” Serrano of Texas; Jenny Krueger of Washington; and Matthew Barron of Minnesota. He remained close in life with his siblings and their families: (the late) Randy Barron of Missouri; Steven Barron, of Texas; and Lori Barron of Oklahoma, who cared for David in his final years.