Dr. Barry Lee Booth: A Veteran's Veteran

By T. Jensen Lacey

Before you ask retired dentist Dr. Barry Lee Booth a question about veterans, maybe you should know that he himself is a veteran. Dr. Booth is fond of saying, “Every day is Veterans’ Day,” and he is passionately dedicated to promoting and celebrating veterans from all branches of service. 

To list Booth’s accomplishments regarding what he has done for veterans, all one needs to do is look around the state of Alabama. Beginning with his tour in Vietnam (1966-67) in the Navy attached to the 1^st and 3^rd Divisions of the Marine Corps, much of his life has been dedicated to promoting veterans’ sacrifices in service to our nation.

Dr. Booth was the guiding force behind the establishment of the Alabama State Veterans’ Memorial Cemetery at Spanish Fort. Not only did Booth encourage the Baldwin County Commission to purchase the original amount of land there in 2006, he donated three more acres to the cemetery, which now claims 103 acres in its environs.

The cemetery formally opened in 2010; one of the more recent soldiers to be interred within the cemetery’s borders was Private (PFC) Bill Morrison, who was killed in action in World War II but whose remains weren’t identified until 2022. Private Morrison was then properly interred in the cemetery, with full military honors.

Another project that Booth pioneered and initiated was the Honor Flight South Alabama Program. From 2008 through 2013, more than 950 World War II veterans were flown to see memorials and statues created in their honor, on display in the nation’s capital. All veterans were accompanied by their guardians, and for many, this was their first official recognition of their military service.

“Through the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and the Honor Flight team of Col. Pat Downing, Mrs. Margaret Coley, Cmdr. Pete Riehm and Col. John New, the Honor Flight program was a great success,” Dr. Booth recalled. The final year for the Honor Flight project was in 2013, due to, in Dr. Booth’s words, “We ran out of veterans. Every veteran that had wanted to go to Washington, DC, we accommodated.” In total, Booth said, veterans honored in this manner numbered 957 through nine flights total.

Dr. Booth has also been in attendance at the Veterans’ Day ceremony in Washington, D.C., and attended the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial Wall in 1982. Part of that ceremony has included a reading aloud of those who made the ultimate sacrifice during this conflict, and this has been done every five years. In 2022, due to Vietnam veterans’ numbers in decline, Dr. Booth read 350 names aloud that year.

One thing Dr. Booth enjoyed witnessing this year was the re-establishment of the enlistment ceremony. This ceremony, which was on a two-year hiatus due to Covid concerns, was held this spring at the USS Battleship Alabama Memorial Park. Describing the enlistment ceremony as “the alpha moment in a veteran’s life,” Dr. Booth said, “With the raising of their right hand and the speaking of a vow, the enlistment ceremony is something that honors new recruits and their families.”

Dr. Booth himself has had honors heaped upon him for his lifetime of service, both in the military and as a dentist. He returned to Vietnam on mission trips on three occasions, doing dental work on children there. He was named South Alabama’s Veteran of the Year in 2009 and Fairhope’s Veteran of the Year in 2010.

For his exemplary career in dentistry, in 2019 the University of Alabama School of Dentistry awarded Dr. Booth their Fuller Award, which honors those dentists who have “given back above and beyond” in their practice of dentistry, and is the highest award given by the school through their Alumni Association (Booth graduated from there in 1966). In 2022, Auburn University nominated Dr. Booth for its Lifetime Achievement Award. He graduated from Auburn in 1962. 

In 2022, Governor Kay Ivey awarded Dr. Booth the Distinguished Service Medal, which is the highest civilian award given in Alabama. In 2022, editorial cartoonist J.D. Crowe wrote a story about Booth as part of a series published by AL.com. Titled “22 Alabamians who made a difference in 2022,” Crowe wrote of Dr. Booth who had always been a “passionate and relentless advocate for veterans.”

Dr. Booth plans to continue to participate in celebrating veterans. He’s a member of the USS Alabama Battleship Commission and the Veterans’ Cemetery Foundation. “It’s important to convey the importance of service to the nation to young people,” he said. “It is important to find a way to serve the nation.”