Career
He also officiated college football and college basketball games in the College Conference of Illinois and the Big Ten Conference. In boxing, he was a president and chairman of the Golden Gloves Association of America. A newspaperman, Barnhill was the managing editor of the Kenosha News in southeastern Wisconsin, and its former sports editors
He was the referee in the 1965 American Federation of Labor-Congress championship game and died less than eleven weeks later.
Barnhill, age 45, collapsed while officiating a high school basketball sectional playoff game in Brookfield, a suburb west of Milwaukee, and was taken to Waukesha Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
