Restaurateur, real estate broker Tom Barnett dies at 65

Sonoma County’s famously vibrant restaurant and music scenes paired graciously in the life of Tom Barnett.

He was a lifelong classical violinist and president of Russian River Chamber Music, which uses proceeds of community concerts to sponsor string-music education in schools. Vocationally, he was a former restaurateur and a real estate broker who often worked the deal when one of the region’s restaurant properties changed hands.

Easygoing and generous, the longtime Healdsburg resident died of complications of cancer and a rare blood-clot disorder Monday at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital.

Barnett’s death one day after his 65th birthday shocked his family and friends because he’d shown no signs of being ill. He saw a doctor nine days earlier, on Nov. 8, because he was experiencing shortness of breath and some leg pain.

Tests revealed a mass on his esophagus that on Nov. 13 was diagnosed as Stage 4 cancer. His wife, Adele Barnett, said he “felt pretty good” on his birthday Sunday.

But he died Monday night, his heart stressed by blood clots caused by disseminated intravascular coagulation, or DIC.

The native of Southern California had previously taught music, trekked the world as a travel agent and made a start in the restaurant business in Long Beach when, in 1984, he and his wife opened the Forty Karrots diner on the Healdsburg Plaza.

“It was a cute place; we loved it,” said Adele Barnett, who met her husband as a neighbor in Huntington Beach. “It was fun to be in Healdsburg. We had no regrets.”

The pair went on to operate the playful Polka Dots restaurant in Santa Rosa’s Railroad Square. When they sold both eateries some years later, Tom Barnett switched full-time to brokering restaurant sales at Santa Rosa Realty.

“For us, Tom was the start of everything,” said Terri Stark, who created, with husband Mark, the acclaimed cluster of Sonoma County restaurants that includes Stark’s Steak & Seafood, Monti’s Rotisserie, Willi’s Seafood and Bravas Bar de Tapas.

Terri Stark half-joked that when her cellphone rang and she saw Barnett was calling, “I would think, ‘Oh, God, do I answer it?’?” She could anticipate that her and Mark’s friend and real estate broker had another potential location or idea for them.

“We couldn’t have found those places on our own,” she said. “He was always the one knowing that we could do it and pushing us in that direction.”

Lisa Hemenway, the prominent former Sonoma County restaurateur who works now as an agent for Barnett’s Santa Rosa Realty, said, “Tom knows everybody in one form or another.”

Hemenway said several of Barnett’s traits astounded her, including his business acumen and musical talent and the way he melded naturally with people from across the spectrum.

“The thing with Tom was, he felt comfortable with presidents and kings, and with the local color,” she said. “He was very, very smart and worldly, and yet so down-home.”

One day, Barnett might dump wine glasses after a Russian River Chamber Music benefit, and the next, he might swap tales with national movers and shakers at the exclusive Bohemian Club of San Francisco or its grand redwood camp near Monte Rio.

He joined the club 27 years ago as a performing member. He was a second violinist in the Bohemian Club orchestra and captain of the orchestra’s camp at the Bohemian Grove.

Friend and fellow Bohemian Club violinist David Martin, also of Healdsburg, said that as captain Barnett constantly improved the camp and saw that anything in need of doing was done promptly and right.

“He never wanted to be in the limelight; he always gave credit to everyone else,” Martin said. He mentioned one of Barnett’s special touches with the club’s classical musicians.

“Always when Tom produced a concert he insisted that the guys wore bow ties, colorful bow ties.”

Barnett was born in Pasadena and began playing the violin at age 7. As a music major at the University of Redlands, he leaped at an opportunity to study for a semester in Salzburg, Austria. The experience bonded him for life with about 20 other Redlands students enrolled in the program.

“We’ve been getting together with most of that group for 40 years,” Adele Barnett said.

Tom Barnett went on to earn a master’s degree in music from Long Beach State University, then became a music teacher in Orange County. He and Adele married in April of 1979, and she helped him to see the world for pay as an agent for Grand Circle Travel.

They subsequently became first-time restaurateurs with the opening of Annie’s in Long Beach. In 1981, they took a break to visit Tom Barnett’s sister, Dr. Ellen Barnett, who at the time was enrolled in the physician residency program at the former Sonoma County Community Hospital.

“We came up to visit her and fell in love with Sonoma County,” Adele Barnett said.

The couple moved north and built the home of Tom Barnett’s dreams off Mark West Springs Road. They also opened Forty Karrots in the Healdsburg space now long occupied by Bistro Ralph.

In 1988, the Barnetts bought the retro Polka Dots in Santa Rosa’s Railroad Square from Hemenway. After several years of operating both restaurants, they set a course of dramatic change, selling both restaurants and their custom home and relocating into a small house near Healdsburg High School.

Tom Barnett had ventured part-time into the real estate business, then decided to go to work full-time for Santa Rosa Realty. He later bought the firm from John Custer.

With music a constant in his life, Barnett played for a time with the American Philharmonic, now the Sonoma County Philharmonic. He also signed on years ago as an organizer of the community concerts hosted by Russian River Chamber Music.

Friend Josie Gay remembers him telling her one day, “As a board member, I want to turn this organization upside down.” Through his initiative, Russian River Chamber Music stopped charging admission for performances, instead accepting donations, and it adopted the new focus of promoting string music instruction in Healdsburg-area schools.

His wife and others who loved Barnett remember him as the constant, unflappable sort of person who would do whatever necessary to be present at an occasion important to a friend. Adele Barnett recalled, too, that out of respect for musicians, he would never stand to leave a symphony performance or other show until all the performers and the director had taken their final bows and left the stage.

“If he saw a street performer,” she said, “he would always give him money.”

In addition to his wife in Healdsburg and his sister in Santa Rosa, Tom Barnett is survived by brothers Andy Barnett of Geyserville and Peter Barnett of Oakland; by Gillian O’Donnell of Sonoma, who has been like a daughter since she came from England as a teen to live with the Barnetts; by O’Donnell’s husband, Fred, and children, Oscar and Ivy; and by numerous nieces and nephews.

Memorial donations are suggested to Russian River Chamber Music, russianriverchambermusic.org.

Plans for a public service are not yet complete.