Жительница Мейна спустя 40 лет встретилась с друзьями погибшего вьетнамского ветерана

Никки Эллис, начавшая изучать историю 19-летнего морпеха Дэвида Кокса в восьмом классе, спустя четыре десятилетия организовала встречу с его друзьями. Встреча позволила женщине лично увидеть места, связанные с жизнью погибшего, и передать память о нем новому поколению.

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Woman connects with Vietnam veteran’s friends after 40 years of research Nikki Ellis first learned about Marine David Cox as an eighth grader on a class trip FORT FAIRFIELD, Maine (WAGM) - A woman traveled to the county to get closer to a Marine she has never met. Vietnam veteran David Cox’s memory has brought unlikely friends together after four decades. David Cox was 19 years old when he died. He was a Marine from Fort Fairfield, killed in Vietnam just nine days after arriving. “We all kind of went to the service. Dave went in with, he went in the buddy system with, I think, four other guys, all from Fort Fairfield, and he was one of the ones that didn’t come back,” Jim Grass said. A field trip assignment Nikki Ellis first learned about Cox as an eighth grader on a field trip to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. “We were just a bunch of 13 and 14 year olds with the same question as, you know, why,” Ellis said. Her assignment was to choose a veteran and learn his story. Ellis grew up in Fairfield, so choosing a name from Fort Fairfield didn’t feel like a stretch at the time. For the next 40 years, Ellis kept researching Cox. She remembered his birthday, thought of him every Veterans Day, and introduced him to the next generation of her family. “My nieces and nephews went on a trip, oh gosh, probably 8 years or so ago, and I told them you need to look for Auntie’s name and I gave them the name, and they searched for it and found it on the wall,” Ellis said. Tracking down David’s friends Years later, the internet helped Ellis track down people who knew David. “The post commander, Josh, he called me, he says, ' Would you be interested in meeting this lady? I said, sure,” Grass said. Grass knew David well growing up. “We took, went up, went up to Van Buren with my brother’s convertible. We weren’t supposed to leave town, but we did. And we were coming, we were leaving Van Buren and heading down the road. Put the top down on his car while we were doing 60 miles an hour. That was one of, that’s just one of the memories I have of Dave, one of the foolish things we’ve done,” Grass said. For Ellis, meeting David’s friends meant finally seeing the places she had spent decades imagining. Ellis says the connection went beyond David. “He was, he was 19 years old. He was just a baby. He just turned 19. He was there nine days and then he was gone,” Ellis said. After all those years, David Cox’s story still lives on. “So he lives through me and he lives through the class of 67,” Ellis said. Copyright 2026 WAGM. All rights reserved.