The mother and brother of a Boeing whistleblower describe his colorful life—and explain why they’re carrying on his lawsuit after his death
In a soft Louisiana drawl, Vicky Stokes is talking about her son, the late John Barnett, recalling the toll that his relentless mission as a whistleblower—exposing what he branded as blatant quality-control breaches that he’d witnessed on the factory floor at Boeing—took on his life.
“He’d come home to Louisiana on a visit and I’d try to talk him into just letting go, to just go to work like everybody else,” relates Stokes, who’s 84 and in fragile health. “’I can’t do that,’ he’d say, ‘I have brothers and nieces and nephews who fly all the time, and I just couldn’t live with myself if anything happened to them or any member of the public flying on these planes.’ His whole fight was making sure things got done the way the procedures were set up, and that wasn’t happening. He just couldn’t stand by and let things go.”
Vicky Stokes is speaking to me by phone from the Charleston, S.C., office of lawyer Rob Turkewitz, alongside her eldest son, Rodney. Their conversation with Fortune marks the first time the family has spoken out in an in-depth interview to the press. (The family had their first TV interview on the CBS Evening News that aired on March 27.)
We're talking exactly 14 days after Barnett, 62, was found dead in the parking lot of a Holiday Inn just across the Ashley River from downtown Charleston, behind the wheel of his Clemson orange Dodge Ram truck, his hand holding a silver pistol. Four days later, the Charleston County Coroner ruled the cause of death an “apparent self-inflicted wound” and disclosed that a “white piece of paper resembling a note” lay in plain view on the passenger seat. (Its contents haven’t been publicly disclosed.)
Now, the lady known to all and sundry as “Miss Vicky” and Barnett’s three surviving brothers want to make sure that the message doesn’t die with the messenger. And for good reason. As a “quality manager” from 2010 to 2017 at the North Charleston plant that assembles the 787 Dreamliner, Barnett had identified what he viewed as a failure to follow processes and processes required by Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing’s own rules, only to see his complaints ignored or dismissed by his managers.
The warnings that Barnett claimed riled Boeing to retaliate against him, and that so worried his mom, have proven shockingly prescient. The drumbeat of airborne cataclysms started with the failure of a new flight control software system on 737 Max airliners that caused the Lion Air and Indonesian Airlines crashes, in 2018 and 2019 respectively, tragedies that together claimed 346 lives.
Then this year, in early January, the blowout of a main cabin door plug on an Alaska Airlines flight, 16,000 feet over Portland, Ore., shortly after takeoff, sounded a boom heard round the world. The mishap once again demonstrated just how deep-seated the types of quality-control gaps that Barnett flagged at North Charleston really were. During his final media interview, with TMZ in late January, six weeks before his death, Barnett concluded, “This is not a 737 problem, this is a Boeing problem. What we’ve seen with the door plug is what I’ve seen with the rest of the plane in terms of jobs not being completed properly, inspection steps removed, and issues being ignored.”
Now Barnett’s grieving family is writing the next chapter in the battle waged by the Louisiana maverick who’s arguably the most famous and credible whistleblower to challenge this fabled manufacturer. His mother and brothers are pressing forward on Barnett’s long-standing lawsuit versus Boeing. They are working on replacing Barnett as plaintiffs in the action, which claims damages for illegally retaliating against Barnett by subjecting Barnett to harassment on the job, blocking him from transferring to other positions at Boeing for which he was well qualified, and depriving the 32-year Boeing veteran of future income by forcing his departure a decade before he planned to retire.
Boeing has denied that it harassed or retaliated against Barnett, and in 2021, issued the following statement: "Boeing has in no way negatively impacted Mr. Barnett's ability to continue whatever chosen profession he chooses."
The lawsuit’s significance isn’t measured by the amount of money Boeing might pay. Its power rests in the lengthy, extremely specific account, some of which is being made public for the first time, of alleged safety violations at the North Charleston factory, and managers’ failures to address them and instead punish the safety hawks who pointed to the problems. The Barnett complaint may serve as a primer of all the things Boeing was doing wrong and the reforms it sorely needs to get its wings level and end one of the most chaotic descents in modern corporate history.
In the Fortune interview, Vicky Stokes and Rodney Barnett chronicled in telling detail the life journey of their beloved son and brother, as John Barnett went from loving the culture at Boeing to fearing that its wrong turn would trigger midair catastrophes; and from a happy-go-lucky soul to a lone crusader who, despite his mom’s advice, couldn’t stop battering against a seeming high wall of resistance. Most of all, his mom and brother stress that though the “I just can’t stop” quest trapped Barnett in anxiety and, it appears, finally broke his spirit, he never harbored the slightest doubt that he should stop moving forward. And now his family is taking the baton.
A funny, high-spirited kid
Barnett’s mother relates that John was born in Dunsmuir, Calif., a trout fishing and white-water-rafting hub near the Oregon border, nestled among forested mountain ridges at the foot of the snowcapped Mt. Shasta volcano. John’s father was a rail worker. In 1964, when John was 2 years old, his mom and dad separated, and Vicky rejoined her family in her hometown of Alexandria, La., a city of around 45,000 in the center of the Pelican State—a two-hour drive northwest of Baton Rouge and a two-hour drive southeast of Shreveport, originally a trading center built on territory sold from France to America in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Flanking the Red River and served by an interstate highway and the Union Pacific Railroad, Alexandria boasts a strong manufacturing base powered by such employers as Procter & Gamble, BASF, and Union Tank Car. Residents unwind at its famed, raucous take on Mardi Gras and annual Elvis festival, and relish dirt-track and dragon boat racing.
John Barnett—called “Mitch” by friends and family after his middle name, Mitchell—was the youngest of four boys. Vicky Stokes nurtured the family mainly as a single mom, working as a certified nurse assistant at a local residential training school. “I raised all my boys to work as kids,” says Stokes. “It was a family effort.” Her older sons shouldered such tasks as bagging groceries at a Piggly Wiggly and pumping gas. “As the eldest,” recalls Rodney, who’s six years John’s senior, “I got the chores done and cooked dinner and kept the other boys in line, which was an ongoing project. But for all of us, working after-school and weekend jobs, and our mom’s example, taught us character and perseverance, and to be honest and own up when we made a mistake.” He notes that, “as the youngest, Mitch didn’t work much. He was funny, free-spirited, and a bit spoiled by mom and his older brothers. But he learned those good qualities too.”
Barnett attended Bolton High School in Alexandria, where just over 100 students typically graduate each year. “He had a best friend named Buster; they were so close,” recalls Vicky, who remarried in 1977 when Barnett was in high school. “Buster’s father was a policeman who kind of adopted Mitch and kept him out of trouble.”
Upon graduation, Barnett joined the Air Force, hoping to work in the military as a technician maintaining microwave towers. But after the enlistee finished eight months of basic training at the Lackland base in San Antonio, the Air Force didn’t have any training slots for new applicants. “My husband had a job in Palmdale, Calif., working on the Space Shuttle for Rockwell International,” says Barnett’s mom. “Mitch joined him at Palmdale on the project.” The Rockwell plant in Palmdale was the facility where all the parts for the shuttle flowed for final assembly. After work on the Atlantis, the fourth edition, was completed in 1985, a number of the Rockwell employees from Palmdale moved 1,100 miles north to the Seattle area for jobs at Boeing. Among that group was John Barnett.
Barnett’s great respect for Boeing while at Everett
Barnett spent 25 years at Boeing's famed Everett complex near Seattle, a period when the facility assembled three groundbreaking jet models: the 747, 767, and 777. According to Rodney and his mother, “Mitch” had great respect for Boeing’s quality safeguards and brilliant engineering, as he expressed in a 2019 interview with Corporate Crime Reporter. “When I worked on the 747, 767, and 777, the people fully understood what it took to build a safe and airworthy aircraft,” Barnett observed.
“While in Everett, he loved Boeing and loved his crew,” says Vicky Stokes. “He was always giving parties for his coworkers. He’d take Mardi Gras beads and cake to work during Mardi Gras. He was proud of his Louisiana heritage.” On the Tribute Wall honoring Barnett, posted on the funeral home website at the Hixson Bros. funeral home in Alexandria, a coworker from that era recounted that once when she and Barnett were leaving the plant, she mentioned she’d had a flat tire, and "instead of just saying to call AAA,” the gallant Barnett “took off his dress shirt” and “fixed it in less than 10 minutes.”
Barnett lived on Camano Island in the Puget Sound, a haven of bike trails and rocky beaches more than a one-hour commute from Everett. His big hobby: stock car racing at the Evergreen Speedway. Barnett relaxed by souping up his “bump to pass” race cars. A photo on the Tribute Wall shows the road warrior posing proudly before a lime green model, helmet tucked under his arm. For a racing trademark-slash-mascot, Barnett adopted the king of the bayou, the alligator. “We went up a lot to watch him race,” says Miss Vicky. “His car had a big green alligator painted on the front of it, and he’d hand out little green plastic alligators to the kids. He even had a real alligator head wired behind the car’s right windshield, and he had alligator heads all over his house as souvenirs. He won rookie of the year and all kinds of trophies. They’re still boxed up in Alexandria.”
Barnett even commissioned an oval logo showing a giant alligator’s open jaws poised to devour his hot rod, adorned by his self-chosen racing moniker, Swamp Dawg. Indeed, most friends, from his lawyers to his buddies at that track, knew Barnett as “Swampy.”
While at Everett, Barnett married his fellow Boeing employee Cindy Swafford, who had two sons from a previous marriage. They divorced after the boys finished high school, but he remained close to both Cindy and his stepsons. In his later years at Everett, Barnett spent nearly all of his time off the job with Diane Johnson, who worked at Boeing, ironically enough, as a liaison with the FAA, though in a different department from Barnett. Years later, his life would revolve around Diane as he dealt with both her fatal illness and the tensions of battling Boeing as a whistleblower.
The whistleblower’s wages of stress
Barnett began his North Charleston stint in 2010 with high hopes and typical good humor, say his mom and brother. Swampy cut the same jumbo-jet wide, flamboyant swath that was as much his brand as the alligator icon. His face framed by an adjoining walrus mustache and bushy goatee, brown hair falling to his shoulders, Barnett won his family's adoration for his boisterous, infectious laugh, and kid-like sense of fun. A photo on the Tribute Wall shows Barnett frolicking in a brother’s pool, a brace of nieces clutching each arm. Decorating his upper chest? What else but an alligator jaws tattoo. “His nieces and nephews called him ‘Funcle,’ for “fun uncle,’” says his mother. He once again made loads of friends in the middle class town of Goose Creek, on a street of 1980s vintage, cheek-by-jowl single-story houses, not a swimming pool in sight.
A shot on the Tribute Wall from the Charleston years captures Barnett joyfully piloting a speedboat in a form-fitting nylon tee-shirt and aviator shades. Rodney recalls that Mitch showed more zeal than seamanship at the helm. “We’d take the speedboat through the locks on the river, that part was ok, but then we’d have to row it back in,” says Rodney, who expressed relief when his brother sold the vessel before returning to Louisiana.
Barnett apparently expected to find the same Boeing in North Charleston that he’d come to cherish and respect in Everett. The plant had just been completed as a super-advanced new facility for assembling the 787. “When he first got the job, he was all excited, and asked me if I’d be interested in working at the North Charleston plant, and said it would be a great job,” says Rodney, who spent 19 years in the Air Force as an avionics navigations systems specialist, and in retirement, serves as assistant chief for his local volunteer fire department. “I declined, but he was excited at being there, and being part of something new." The optimism was short-lived. Vicky relates that she and her husband also lived in Goose Creek for eight months, just so she could be close to her son. “It was after the first year or two, and his concerns started to show,” she recounts. “He’d come home worried. He couldn’t believe the difference in culture between here and Seattle.” Adds Rodney, “He saw a big change in the way people conducted themselves, and conversed with him.”
Returning home, still battling Boeing
In early 2017, Barnett left Boeing following years in which he’d spotted multiple gaffes, ranging from misfiring oxygen tanks that rendered the safety masks that fall from the plane’s ceiling unusable in cases of decompression, to sharp titanium shards that that mixed with electrical wiring. Just before leaving, he filed a complaint with OSHA that’s now the basis of his labor lawsuit, claiming that his managers ignored many of his findings, and forced him out for constantly raising legitimate safety issues demanding immediate attention.
Motivating his move back to Alexandria was a desire to care for his mom, says Miss Vicky. “He could have moved near the three other boys, who are an hour to over two hours from Alexandria, but came here for me because he was worried about my health,” she remembers. But a year later, Barnett learned that Diane Johnson, who’d been diagnosed with brain cancer, would soon enter a nursing home. Barnett stepped forward to became his beloved companion’s caregiver; Diane moved to Alexandria and they married. While Diane was still active, the couple had a ball donning overalls and building and fiddling with off-road vehicles that Barnett raced on dirt tracks. “He traded asphalt in Washington for dirt in Louisiana,” notes Rodney. The couple constructed a road-going monstrosity pictured on the Tribute Wall from flat steel panels, in a narrow shape resembling a loaf. In a final flourish, they attached an alligator’s head to the right dashboard shelf.
“You could see in his quiet moments that he was suffering from high anxiety. He had a big load on him having to look over documents and give depositions in the Boeing case, that weighs on you,” Miss Vicky says of Barnett. “You could see the strain on his face. But he’d never load it on anyone else.” She adds that he showed only his bright side at family get-togethers, and especially to his nieces and nephews. Rodney revives the pivotal moment when his niece and rival off-road racer Katelyn Gillespie smashed into her uncle’s rig, knocking the alligator head askew. Says Rodney, "That was when Mitch gave up racing work on his niece’s car."
For Miss Vicky, visiting Mitch and Diane was an uplifting experience. “Until she had her last stroke, they’d look at each other and laugh like they had a secret,” says his mom. “You couldn’t get depressed going to their house.” She credits her son’s devotion to prolonging Diane’s life. “They gave her 14 months to live when she was first diagnosed, and she lived almost five years,” says Miss Vicky. “Mitch took care of her like a baby, feeding her and sitting with her eight hours a day.” Diane died a few days before Thanksgiving in 2022.
Barnett's family as new plaintiffs
For the funeral attended by over 100 people on Saturday, March 16, Barnett’s ex-wife Cindy attended with his two stepsons, and as did his lawyer Turkewitz and his wife. In the following days, the attorneys huddled with Rodney, Miss Vicky and other family members to explore if they wanted to substitute his seat for Barnett and continue the litigation, and they quickly agreed to do so. Vicky Stokes and Rodney Barnett insisted in our interview that their decision isn’t about money. “We’re bringing the case to show that my brother was right-on with his allegations from the start," says Rodney. "Showing that will make air travel safer for our family and all the people he was worried about, and change Boeing's culture." The family members, though they’ve called for a thorough investigation of the tragedy, say they have done nothing to encourage or spread rumors that foul play caused his death.
The legal case has had a long back-and-forth history. It was filed under the federal “AIR-21” law that prohibits employers from retaliating against whistleblowers. In late 2020, OSHA effectively ruled in Boeing’s favor, finding “no reasonable cause” to believe that the aerospace giant had violated the act. Barnett’s lawyers then issued an amended complaint requesting a hearing from the Office of Administrative Law Judges at the U.S. Department of Labor, the current action seeking damages for harassment, lost pay, and emotional distress. Boeing filed a motion to dismiss the case. But in mid-2022, the Dept. of Labor Judge found in Barnett’s favor, writing that “I agree with the Complainant that and conclude that… the complaint adequately alleges a pattern of retaliatory conduct that rises to the level of a hostile work environment...and [unmerited] discharge.”
On March 20, Turkewitz and his co-counsel Brian Knowles made the complaint public for the first time in seven years. The 32-page document cites the titanium shards, oxygen mask problems, the installation of defective parts, and several other alleged violations of Boeing and FAA processes and procedures. It may be the most thorough eyewitness account of production lapses ever presented by a Boeing whistleblower. After Barnett’s attorneys released the complaint, Boeing issued a release that reprised its statement on his death two weeks earlier, saying that “We are saddened by Mr. Barnett’s passing, and our thoughts are with his family and friends,” and adding that “Boeing reviewed and addressed quality issues that Mr. Barnett raised before he retired, as well as other quality issues referred to in the complaint.”
The day before Barnett died, he delivered roughly four hours of testimony in the opulent downtown Charleston offices of Boeing’s trial lawyer; its outside counsel was also present. Barnett had wanted to leave Charleston that evening so that he could drive back to Alexandria by Sunday. But late on Friday, he agreed to finish his testimony on Saturday. “Let’s just get it done,” he’d declared. “I’ve already been waiting for seven years.”
Barnett had earlier told his mother that he’d make the two-day trip and be home by Sunday; Miss Vicky recalls that he also had an appointment for dinner with a close friend that evening. “He was worried about his health, he’d lost weight, he was my baby, but he looked older than my youngest son,” she told me. “But one thing didn’t stress him out. He told me, ‘Momma, I’ve never said anything but the truth. They’ll never catch me in a lie.’” She added on CBC Mornings, "If it hadn't gone on so long, I'd still have my son, and his brothers would have their brother." That Miss Vicky, Rodney and his family are pushing forward in one of the most dramatic campaigns in the annals of whistleblowing testifies to their confidence in a man drilled in honesty by a single-working mom, and a "cop-godfather" who started him on the straightest of paths, one that his family's convinced, he never ceased to follow.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
