Our 2011 Marine of the year is making headlines again–this time, for an ambitious project to honor all the fallen troops hailing from his home state.
We caught up with Maj. David Cote, a Pentagon budget analyst, earlier this year about his work in support of homeless veterans, centering on the development of an analytical tool to determine risk factors that caught the attention of San Diego mayor Bob Filner and a number of members of Congress. The tool, the the Service Member Attrition Risk Tool (SMART) is now being used by Veteran’s Village in San Diego to serve its homeless and at-risk population.
If he wasn’t staying busy enough between that project and his day job, Cote recently announced the launch of a 12-month project to commemorate all the troops from his home state of Maine who have been killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Called the Summit Project, it will culminate on May 26, 2014 in a hike up Mt. Katahdin in Maine’s Baxter State Park to create a memorial at the top with a stone inscribed to honor each service member. MORE…