Fallen officer’s family rebuilds after 1988 tragedy

Karen Payne Barnhart’s certainty that she’ll see David Payne again in heaven, in a special corner for heroes who gave their lives to protect others, kept grief from consuming her, she said.

It might have. They were high school sweethearts who had two small children, ages 5 and almost 3.

“He was the love of my life,” Barnhart said of David. “I loved him. I never wanted to love any other man.”

A single bullet – fired 20 years ago – almost demolished her world.

Payne, a Lewiston police officer, was shot and killed by a drug-addled robber on July 23, 1988. He was 26.

It’s an event that still tears at Barnhart.

For Wednesday’s anniversary, she’ll think about the young man who loved being a father, a husband and a cop.

“I don’t want to focus on the brutality of what happened,” she said. “He loved the job. He’d say, ‘I can’t believe I’m getting paid to do this.'”

His enthusiasm would lift her.

“You couldn’t help but smile,” she said.

For Barnhart and her children, the years have been healing. In the immediate aftermath, she only wanted to care for the kids. They were so young. Family, including David’s parents Ray and Barb, helped enormously.

She prayed.

Her Christian faith seemed to keep her together as the weeks and months turned to years, she said.

“Just knowing that I am going to see him again helps,” she said. “I don’t know how I would have survived without believing that.”

In a way, the church also led her to move on with her life.

“I didn’t want to remarry,” she said. Then David’s father, a minister who had moved to upstate New York after David’s death, introduced her to a man from his parish.

Bill Barnhart was a widower who had lost his wife to cancer. He had two children.

“We talked on the phone for three weeks before we ever met,” she said. “We talked for hours and hours.”

Once they met, they fell in love and married.

The couple married 16 years ago. Karen and the children moved to Bill Barnhart’s home in Ticonderoga, N.Y., about 25 minutes from Ray and Barb.

“I couldn’t imagine it happening any other way,” she said. “My in-laws love Bill.” He and his boys became part of their family.

The connections continued after the marriage. Karen and Bill each adopted the other’s children. It was a gesture meant to secure the family, not to forget the past.

“We know how important it is to remember,” Karen Barnhart said. Both sets of children have lost loved parents. All carry traits of the one who died.

David’s daughter and son, Erika and Evan, are athletes like their dad. Both have mannerisms of their father, such as the way Evan twists his tongue when he thinks. He wasn’t yet 3 years old when his father died, but the 22-year-old man he’s become does it anyway.

Evan David Payne Barnhart now lives in Michigan. He graduated this spring from Tennessee Temple University in Chattanooga. He is studying for his master’s degree and plans to be a teacher.

Erika Lynn Payne Barnhart Reyes, now 25, has married and is also studying for a master’s degree. She works as a first-grade teacher in Virginia.

All will be thinking today of Lewiston, the tragedy here and of David, Karen Barnhart said.

She has found peace with her memories, though they remain sharp and vivid after two decades.

“Honestly, it seems like just yesterday,” she said.