Travis A Ford
Profile
Age: 30
From: Ogallala, Neb.
Assigned to Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron 267, Marine Aircraft Group 39, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, Camp Pendleton, Calif.
Incident: Marine Capt. Travis A. Ford was killed in action when his AH-1W Super Cobra helicopter crashed during combat operations near Ali Aziziyal, Iraq.
Died: April 04, 2003
In e-mails to his relatives, Travis Ford, a helicopter pilot, wrote that he was seeing things in Iraq that he didn’t want to see, but he felt worse for the ground troops who couldn’t return to base.
“I know there were some trying times out there for him,” but he didn’t let that get him down, said his brother, Alex Ford. “He epitomized the Marine Corps leadership. He was probably more concerned about his troops than his own welfare.”
Ford had followed his brother, now a Marine reservist and FBI agent, into the military. On April 4, he was returning from a mission near Baghdad when his gunship crashed, said his father-in-law, Bob Tipton.
“He died giving his life for the country,” Alex Ford said. “That is a tremendous sacrifice, but he did so...