Michael Davis Barnett

ORLEANS — Michael Davis Barnett of Orleans died peacefully on April 21, 2008.

Born in Chicago on Feb. 19, 1927, he grew up in Highland Park, Ill., and Pelham, N.Y. He enlisted in the armed services shortly after his 17th birthday in what became the closing months of World War II. He was sent to Tokyo University and then assigned to the international team that surveyed the 38th Parallel in Korea. He often recounted surveying by night so that they could use the stars in their calculations.

Following military service, he attended Yale and worked as the photographer on the Yale Daily News. He graduated from Yale in 1950, and then from Columbia University Business School before joining the General Electric training program. In 1955, he was hired by Booz Allen Hamilton in New York City as a management consultant.

In 1956, he married Joan Dymond of Marblehead, and the couple moved to New Canaan, Conn., where they resided for the next 46 years, raising four children.

Mr. Barnett co-founded the investment company Coenen & Company in New York City in 1966. He left to start Primary Medical Communications, which seized on cutting edge video technology to film and market surgical techniques to medical schools. Mr. Barnett helped found Marketing Outlooks, a purveyor of banking services, before selling the company and retiring in 1987.

Michael was a chief in the Indian Guides for nine years with his three boys. An Eagle Scout, he was a troop leader in New Canaan for 10 years. He was also a member of the Chestnut Ridge Rod and Gun Club in Dover Plains, N.Y., for 60 years. He was a charter member of the Lake Club in New Canaan and a member of the Orleans Yacht club on Cape Cod, where he and his family spent summers.

For the last 29 years, he has traveled extensively with his wife while also enjoying a life of fishing and shellfishing on the Cape. They moved to Orleans permanently in 2003.

He was an avid gardener, gourmet cook and outdoorsman who loved to hunt and fish. He trained hawks as a young boy. In later years, he could often be found camped out on his hunting property in Dutchess County, N.Y., with his sporting friends and family. For over 40 years, he flew to the Bradford Camps on Lake Munsungan in northern Maine for "ice out" salmon fishing in early May.

He is survived by his loving family; wife, Joan; his children, Lysandra Lincoln and her husband, Brian of Wilton, Conn., Michael Davis Barnett Jr. and his wife, Leslie of Sherborn, Mass., Zachary Barnett of Jackson, Wyo., and Berkeley Barnett and his wife, Michele of Oakland, Calif.; as well as seven grandchildren, Gray and Lyssa Lincoln; Kristen and Brooke Barnett; Bohdan Barnett; and Bridget and Bella Barnett.

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m., at the Federated Church of Orleans, May 3, 2008.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to either the Broad Reach Hospice or the American Cancer Society, and mailed to Broad Reach Hospice, 390 Orleans Rd., North Chatham, MA 02650.

Nickerson Funeral Home

508-255-0259