DC Plane crash victim Brian Ellis an enduring friend
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Brian Ellis and his teammates won the Georgia state high school football championship in 1987. By the fall of his senior year in 1988, he was their starting quarterback.
“It was an early sign of his leadership and commitment to team values,” stated a tribute to him this week by the public school district in his hometown in Clayton County, Georgia. Those virtues would follow him through a football career at the U.S. Naval Academy, almost 22 years as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, and in the enduring friendships he maintained until he perished with 66 others in the mid-air collision over Washington, D.C. last week.
Ellis, 53, served as a helicopter pilot and instructor for 12 years of his Marine career, including stints overseas while deployed. For his friends, the irony of his death in a collision with an Army helicopter was tough to handle.
