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Near-Death Experience Offers Coach New Life
Story and photos by Marcus Chavez
He was dying. That was the first thing that came to his mind... Trying to reach for his glasses because he couldn't see... Vision blurring even more... If he could get his glasses on, everything would be clear and it would be all right. He never got to his glasses.
The next thought in his mind was a span of time where he didn't sense anything was happening; he was just talking to God. It wasn't being spoken out of his mouth, but he was saying how he wasn't interested in going back home or seeing everyone; the only thing he was really interested in was going to Heaven. And seeing his grandmother there, because he knew she was there.
After that, Coach Kevin Barnette remembers how everything had calmed down. The doctors were no longer in a state of panic. His racing heartbeat had dropped from around 350 beats per minute to 180 beats per minute.
Coach Kevin Barnette is the Assistant Head Coach and Defense Coordinator of the Mars Hill College Football team.
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Coach Kevin Barnette, class of '85, is the Assistant Head Coach and Defense Coordinator of the Mars Hill College football team. His physical condition had always been superb. His knowledge of strength training, dieting, and exercise is shared with his students first-hand in his PE 101 Foundations class. He could easily bench 250 lbs. and had been healthier than anyone seen working out at some high dollar health club.
On an ordinary day in January of 1997, Barnette had returned from a football-recruiting trip. He went to Lowe's to fix a home appliance that was constantly giving him problems. He felt his heart begin to race. What began at 7 p.m. ended at 1 a.m., in the hospital, with a heartbeat of 350 beats per minute. He didn't sense the severity of his situation until there were 12 doctors with him, in the emergency room.
Barnette spent 30 days at Duke Memorial Hospital. He went through shock therapy once a day to get his heart back to normal. After 9 days his chest and back were charred, his skin scorched black, darker, he said, than his trainer's hip sack. The next morning, Barnette gathered his five brothers and his close friend Coach Chuck Phifer by his hospital bed. He apologized for the way he had lived his life and told them that from that day on he would be a different man.
Offered a second chance at life at age 34, Barnette stepped outside the hospital to view his new world. "The breeze. That was the first thing I realized…The trees looked different. The sky looked different . . When I got to my parents home, everything in the house looked different. It was all in the same place, but it looked different. Anytime I'd go anywhere, there were some things I'd really never seen before. That's what it was. I think there were just things that I'd not ever seen. I had never taken the time and just saw, or noticed them."
Barnette has deep roots in the Mars Hill area, where his ancestors settled more than a century ago.
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Barnette says that before this event his life was somewhat carefree. He was mainly looking for personal gain as a pleasure seeker. "All the things I was looking for in my old life, I now am able to live in my new life. I was looking for peace. I was trying to find peace in so many different things and so many different places. Now I have peace in my relationship with Jesus. I'm not carefree anymore. I'm more prone to see what people's needs are and how I can help out."
Coaching life has changed for Barnette. In relating to people, he would never sense anything they were going through. But now, "When somebody is telling me they're hurting, I have a sensing of their hurt. Or somebody's frustrated; I have a sensing of their frustration. I don't think I had that compassion before. Because the only thing I thought about was the end result- of trying to take care of it. But I think until you really feel what people are going through, you can't know how to help them as far as their end result."
Barnette has deep roots in the Mars Hill area, where his ancestors settled more than a century ago. As a student at Mars Hill College, he was named twice to the All-South Atlantic Conference team and in 1984 was named second team All American by the NAIA. That same year he also received All-Conference academic honors. Barnette has been coaching at Mars Hill College for 15 years. He is also a licensed minister and soon to be ordained this fall as a reverend at the River of Life Church in West Asheville.
His family life has flourished with his wife Recy and two sons Elisha and Nehemiah. He and his wife chose Elisha's name while studying the Old Testament book of Kings. They liked the story of Elisha because "He was willing to give up his life to serve and really had a heart for God."
Photo courtesy of Kevin Barnette
Barnette's family life has flourished with his wife Recy and two sons Elisha and Nehemiah.
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The name of their second child, Nehemiah, comes from the Old Testament chapter of the same name. Nehemiah was a wall builder who led the effort to rebuild the wall after Jerusalem had been torn down. He was persistent in his work and stood guard, not letting anyone move him from his position.
Barnette says the inspiration for the name came one Sunday at church before Nehemiah was born and before Recy even knew she was pregnant. Bishop Ann Hartman "was preaching and using my wife and son Elisha as an example. But she kept saying Nehemiah instead of Elisha. Some of the ministers put up their hands, whispering, 'No Miss, it's Elisha!' She said, 'I know it's Elisha, but there's a Nehemiah in there!' So we went a week later to the doctor to get a pregnancy test. . .and sure enough, there was a Nehemiah in there! We found out we were pregnant. We just assumed it was a boy. And when we had the ultra-sound a month later, it was a boy. So obviously his name had to be Nehemiah."
Last month, Barnette returned to his cardiologist in Asheville for a checkup. When he was connected to the machine that checked his heart monitor's battery, a malfunction occurred. The heart monitor took control and shocked Barnette four times. Once again he ended up in the hospital - a reminder of the heart condition that he lives with daily.
"A lot of people think that was a traumatic thing, being shocked four times, having to go to Duke, being in the hospital for five days," Barnette says. "But over the last three months, those were probably the best five days because I met so many different people. I got to pray with different people, so many different people got to pray with me, and I got to hear things that God was doing in so many people's lives. My family was there the whole time. I saw the favor of God in my whole situation."
If the malfunction had occurred away from his cardiologist's office, Barnette would have been shocked, but there would have been no way for him to stop it, he said. "So I would have either died or passed out…So it was God's favor, number one, that I was there. And the second thing I saw…is that I had opportunity to meet people."
He was back with the Mars Hill Lions that Saturday. His heart condition was just an afterthought.
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As he encountered people at the hospital, he realized he was there for a reason. "I met them and talked with them, whether they were working in the hospital or drawing blood from me or whether they were putting IV's in my arm. When they began to talk with me and we had conversation, I'd come to realize that those moments, I was there for them, to say things to them that they needed to hear, or to pray for them, things that needed to be prayed for."
Barnette's presence was needed at that time and that particular day.
He was back with the Mars Hill Lions that Saturday. His heart condition was just an afterthought. He continued, "It was a big gain. I wasn't stressed. I wasn't panicked. It was like, Man, I'm seeing what God is doing, and I'm just waiting. I'm waiting to see what he has next!"
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