Memorial service set for retired rear admiral, assistant surgeon general

He loved Edgar Rice Burroughs, the American writer who created Tarzan, and read voraciously — anything he could get his hands on, from science manuals to science fiction.

He also had a sportsman side to him. He wasn’t, as his daughter points out, “a full nerd.”

He loved to hunt elk and deer. He never missed a UNLV Rebels basketball game. And he was a devout Catholic, an accomplished scientist.

Retired Rear Admiral Delbert Sylvester Barth, a UNLV lecturer, a West Point Military Academy graduate, an assistant surgeon general with the United States Public Health Service, died Thursday afternoon in Henderson after suffering a stroke four weeks ago.

He was 88. His family was by his side.

“He was predominantly just ‘Dad’ to me,” said his youngest, Diana Gaines, 57, a Valley High School graduate who went on to become a civil engineer. “You could bet that whenever we had problems with our math and science questions in college, he was there for us.”

Barth was was born on July 6, 1925, in Upper Sandusky, Ohio. He was valedictorian of his graduating high school class in 1941. But he was most proud, his daughter said, of graduating from West Point Military Academy and of his degree in military engineering.

He taught chemistry there for four years after graduating in 1946, she said.

It was at West Point, said son-in-law, Mark Gaines, 58, that Barth would get a taste of what teaching was really like. It inspired him to return to the classroom at UNLV in the 1990s, where he taught environmental studies and biophysics as a professor emeritus.

“As much as he was a government administrator and scientist,” said Mark Gaines, “he loved teaching. He loved to impart knowledge to the students. That’s what really excited him.”

Teaching younger generations at UNLV came during the sunset of Barth’s life, but for the vast majority of it, Barth served the government for 28 years. He worked for the Environmental and Protection Agency. He worked for the National Air Pollution and Control Administration. He worked for the Southwestern Radiological Health Laboratory. He worked for the United Health Public Service Agency.

Before that, he was burning the midnight oil and studying at various universities to get there, family members said. He earned a master’s degree in nuclear physics from Ohio State University in 1952, a master’s degree in solid state physics from Stevens Institute of Technology in 1960; a Ph.D in biophysics from Ohio State in 1962.

His scientific knowledge was what helped pay the bills, family members said. It put supper on the table for the four children. In short, he was always there for them.

He had his rules, noted his daughter.

“And you knew what they were: You were to be respectful at all times, pull your own share, always be truthful. That’s what my father was about. He was a military guy. He earned his rear admiral bars for a reason.”

Or, as Burroughs once wrote: “Imagination is but another name for super intelligence.”

Those who knew Barth can pay their final respects at St. Thomas More Church, 130 N. Pecos Road in Henderson. The memorial service begins at noon on Saturday.