Melissa Rose Barnes

Yeoman Third Class, United States Navy. Born in Whittier and a resident of Redlands.

She joined the Navy in May 1992 as a hospital corpsman at the naval hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia, and later trained in communications in Mississippi.

She left the service in 1997 and missed it, and re-enlisted in March 1999 as a yeoman third class. She was posted to the Telecommunications Center in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations at the Pentagon.

She was on duty on the morning of the eleventh of September and was making weekend plans with a friend when the aircraft struck at twenty-three minutes to ten. She was twenty-seven, and a few weeks from her first sea duty.

Her mother said she was really outgoing and bubbly, always up for a good time. Her friends remember her as the clown of the class and of the family.

She is buried at Riverside National Cemetery in California.

Killed at the Pentagon on the morning of 11 September 2001, when American Airlines flight 77 struck the western face of the building at 9:37. A hundred and twenty-five people inside and fifty-nine aboard the aircraft were killed.