Frederick E Pokorney Jr
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Age: 31
From: Tonopah, Nev.
Assigned to the Headquarters Battery, 1st Battalion, 10th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, Camp Lejeune, N.C.
Incident: Marine 2nd Lt. Frederick E. Pokorney Jr. was killed in action near Nasiriyah, Iraq.
Died: March 23, 2003
Frederick Pokorney Jr. started his career as an enlisted man. He ended it as an officer.
At 6-foot-6, Pokorney played center on a Tonopah, Nev., High School basketball team that went 14-9 and was runner-up for the state championship in 1989.
“He was a nice looking, tall, muscular kid,” said Joann Cody, assistant sheriff in Nye County, Nev.
Pokorney had taken care of himself for many years. His mother left when he was 1½, said his father, Fred Pokorney Sr., who lives in Branson, Mo. The elder Pokorney had not spoken to his son in more than five years.
“It’s sad, but I don’t know much about his life,” his father said. “He had his own life and didn’t want to have much to do with me.”
Pokorney moved to Nevada when his father, a construction worker, got a temporary job at a missile test range near Tonopah. After his father left, his son stayed, living with the local sheriff and his basketball