Business Leader Remembered for Community Service

By Erica Williams

Jan 8 -- Pete Barrett, whose appliance store equipped Santa Monica homes and businesses for more than a half century, was remembered as a tireless champion of city youth and charitable causes during a memorial service at St. Monica's Church Wednesday.

Hundreds of Santa Monicans, many of them civic and business leaders, celebrated Barrett's generosity and the way he inspired the best in people. Barrett, 80, died December 27 after suffering for five years with Alzheimer's.

"There's hardly a community of any kind that the Barretts weren't there for," said city councilman Bob Holbrook, referring to the Barrett family. "Community service was synonymous with Pete Barrett."

"Pete raised the level of those around him," businessman Russell Barnard said at the service. "He left his mark on every community organization in this town."

Barrett was involved in numerous institutions and charities, including Santa Monica College, the Heritage Museum and the Salvation Army, serving on numerous boards and helping to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars. The "Pete Barrett Open" Golf Tournament was highly successful in raising money for the Kiwanis Club and various youth charities.

A skilled boxer and athlete, Barrett also founded a private gym in the 1960s known as the Santa Monica Athletic Club. For 30 years he was affiliated with the Boys and Girls Club, where he served on the Board of Governors in the late 1980s. Barrett also coached Little League Baseball teams.

Barrett "had great compassion for everyone;" said Allan Young, president of the Boys and Girls Club, who first met Barrett when he played against his Little League teams nearly 50 years ago. "In Little League everyone wanted to play for his team."

One of Young's fondest memories was as a high school youth going to Barrett's boxing gym after school.

"He'd let you pummel away at him," Young said. And if you threw a stray punch, he recalled with a laugh, he'd knock you to the floor and then take you out for a cold soda.

Barrett especially liked helping in the Boys and Girls Club's family assistance program at Christmas, Young said. He donated refrigerators and stoves and "anything we needed for the kids," Young said, adding that Barrett's son, Pat, is continuing the tradition. And, he said, "We never get a bill from Barrett's Appliances. "

Young recalled the time when Barrett donated a doublewide refrigerator to a 75-year-old grandmother who had custody of her grandchildren. Young, who accompanied Barrett on the delivery, said the woman hyperventilated and passed out at the sight of the refrigerator.

Barrett panicked, thinking the woman's problem was life threatening but Barrett, Young said, remained very calm throughout the whole thing. Turns out she was merely excited.

Born on January 10, 1922 in Los Angeles, Laurance "Pete" Barrett was raised in Colorado, where his family grew much of their own food and lived modestly, according to family members.

He enlisted in the Army in 1940 and served in combat in the South Pacific during World War II, before settling in Santa Monica. With only a toolbox and some bus tokens, he founded Barrett Appliances in 1946 in a nondescript storefront on Main Street.

With his first wife, Donna, he helped raised five boys but lost three of them in the forty years that followed. Barrett married his current wife Susan in 1979. Together they were known in Santa Monica as a team in their far-reaching community work.

At Wednesday's memorial service Barnard recalled that in the late 1970s Barrett, determined not to let building conflicts tear the community apart, formed the Main Street planning group to bring all sides together. The group's formation was a landmark, Barnard, that later became a model for community planning organizations in many cities.

"I will always think of Pete as being the first to greet me with a smile and a handshake and a pat on the back," Holbrook said. "He was a great guy, I will miss his smile. His loss will be felt. He's not replaceable."

Barrett is survived by his wife Susan, sons Pat and Tim and six grandchildren.