Eric A Cranford

Lieutenant Commander, United States Navy, a helicopter pilot.

Born and raised at Drexel, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge. His mother tells of finding him at three years old standing at the road with three books under his arm, waiting for the school bus. He was baptised at twelve in the church youth group where he met Emily Cozort, whom he married.

He became an Eagle Scout and went back as a waterfront instructor at the summer camp, to give something back to it. He was selected for the Air Force Academy on leaving school and took a Naval ROTC scholarship at North Carolina State instead, reading political science and economics, and was accepted for flight training at Pensacola and Corpus Christi.

While he waited for flight school to begin he worked at the National Museum of Naval Aviation, where he was asked to model for the wartime pilot in the Spirit of Naval Aviation statues that stand at the entrance.

He took his wings and chose helicopters, and flew two tours in the Persian Gulf off the Gettysburg and the Carr. His last land posting was the Naval Command Post at the Pentagon, where he was selected for lieutenant commander. He was reading for an MBA in the evenings and had done half the hours.

On the sixth of June 1994 he wrote in his journal: imagine a cause where a nation would agree that the cause was worth risking everything. If everything were to be lost, then that would be justified because failure was less acceptable than death.