During 23 years in the Army much of it in the elite ranks of the 75th Ranger Regiment Jeff Struecker saw combat in Panama, Iraq and Afghanistan, but nothing compared to the infamous October 1993 gunfight through the streets of Mogadishu.
Samford University’s former campus minister, professor dies
Updated Feb 23, 2021;
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Barnette died on Monday, Feb. 22. He was 59.
Barnette retired from the university this year and a scholarship was endowed in his name.
Last year, Barnette was diagnosed with Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, an untreatable degenerative brain disorder. He had recently been in hospice care.
Barnette had also served as senior pastor of Brookwood Baptist Church in Birmingham since 2016 and teaching pastor since 2008.
“Jim was a gifted teacher and preacher,” said Brookwood interim Pastor Blake Dempsey. “He blessed our congregation with over 700 sermons in nearly 1,200 services. Beyond his teaching and preaching ministry, Jim befriended many, from Mountain Brook to Inglenook to Cape Town, South Africa. His absence is a tremendous loss, but his words of faith and love still linger in our hearts and we are all better off for having known him and having been loved by him.”
a trip back to somalia, his journey called return to mogadishu: remembering blackhawk down. jeff joins us from atlanta now. jeff, why did you go back? a couple of reasons, brian. one of them is that i really wanted to see the difference in mogadishu. mogadishu is actually worse today than it was 20 years ago. but for another reason. a friend of mine that was in somalia both decided by going back there we would better be able to tell our story of what happened 20 years ago. what did the movie miss? the movie is exceptionally accurate but it is not nearly as violent as the real deal. it is probably a good thing for anyone who has seen blackhawk down you only see a fraction of the violence that happened 20 years ago. brian: you said it was bloodier and rawer had you lived through it. here s a section of the documentary.
out. brian: jeff, i ve got another question for you. it s how it changed you afterwards. what happened to you after that moment? somalia really changed my life. i thought i would be a ranger sergeant for the rest of my life. as a result of somalia i became an army chaplain and spent the last ten years in the army. brian: you went back to afghanistan and iraq multiple times as a chaplain? yeah. i had a chance to look guys in the eyes and say i know what you re going through because i ve been there and let me tell you the difference that faith ph jesus christ makes when you re in a fire fight. brian: and that difference that it makes? it lets you know where you re going to go should you lose your life? yeah. one of the reasons why i went back to somalia this spring was to do this documentary which basically said the only reason why i was able to go back and forth in and out of the city streets is because i had a very strong faith in
where in jesus christ and i knew where i was going to spend my eternity. brian: it s called return to mogadishu: remembering blackhawk down. find it everywhere. jeff struecker, thanks. the government just called the e.p.a. nonessential. how does that work? then, while radio legend casey kasum died of parkinson s, his kids are protesting outside his house. what do they want? [ male announcer ] progresso s so passionate about its new