With an ace carpenter’s death, a Santa Rosa mom loses 2 sons in less than a year

Dennis Barrett Jr. of Windsor was a master framer. That's the member of a construction crew who builds the wooden skeleton of a building and had better get it right because if not, the adding on of walls, windows, doors and such won't go at all well.

“He was extremely talented, and a stickler for detail and for getting in there and making sure everything is plumb and level and square,” said Barrett's employer, Mike Dethlefsen of Mikara Construction.

Barrett also was the 40-year-old father of three children and a source of pride to his mother, Nancy Clancy of Santa Rosa. His death June 3 to lymphoma was especially harsh to her, as she lost one of his brothers less than a year ago.

“I think I'm in a nightmare,” she said.

Dennis Barrett was born in Santa Rosa on April 26, 1979.

“We kind of moved around,” Clancy said. “I'm sure he always considered Santa Rosa his home.”

At different times in his childhood, Barrett lived in Lake County, Mendocino County's Anderson Valley and Idaho. He left Ukiah High School to learn construction from a brother in the trades, Greg McRae of Upper Lake.

“That's where it started,” their mother said. Clancy said Barrett found bliss working as a carpenter.

“He loved it,” she said. “He loved building houses.”

Clancy said Barrett helped to construct homes in Santa Rosa's Fountaingrove area and elsewhere over the years. “He was never out of work,” she said.

Barrett joined the crew at Santa Rosa's Mikara Construction a year ago.

Recently, company president Dethlefsen said, Barrett framed a workshop over the foundation of a Rincon Valley granny unit destroyed by the Tubbs fire, and a large recreational-vehicle barn on a fire survivor's property near Fountaingrove. Dethlefsen called Barrett “a framing machine.”

“He was a headstrong guy, but that made him the kind of framer he was,” Dethlefsen said. “He cared about what he did, and he did it extremely well.

“And we will miss him, a lot.”

It was earlier this year when Barrett sought medical attention for pain to a foot. He was diagnosed in April with melanoma.

The cancer spread to his lymph nodes. His mother said he had been in and out of Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, the same place he'd been born, when he died June 3.

Barrett had lived for about the past two years in Windsor with his sons, Taylor Ray Barrett, 16, and Ray Steven Barrett, 7. His daughter, 18-year-old Makayla Barrett, lives with her mother in Somerset, in El Dorado County.

Clancy said her son was saving up to buy “a little piece of dirt” in Lake County and to build a home for himself and his boys.

His death comes only 11 months after that of one of his three brothers, Ken McRae.

McRae, a Piner High alumnus and former wrestler and wrestling coach, made the newspaper in 2014 when he saw a group of teens attack a kid near Santa Rosa's downtown transit mall. McRae ran to the victim's aid and was badly beaten himself.

A friend told The Press Democrat that he'd struggled with personal demons even prior to the beating. Kenny McRae took his own life Aug. 11. He was 50.

His mother said she can hardly believe that both he and her youngest child are gone.

In addition to his three children, his mother and his brother Greg McRae, Barrett is survived by his sister, Tina Weaver, and his brother, Don McRae, both of Santa Rosa.

Services will be held at 12:30 p.m. Saturday at Waggoner Hall within Santa Rosa's Center for Spiritual Living.