S5 E19 Legacy with Derek Abbey, Project Recover

Derek Abbey, PhD is a retired Marine and CEO of Project Recover joins me for a fascinating interview where we talk about the importance of leaving a legacy and how Project Recover is healing families’ stories.

 

 Project Recover, an international nonprofit that uses the latest in science, technology and archival research, with a mission to find and repatriate the remains of fallen American troops.

 

Derek Abbey says there are 82,000 Americans in uniform missing in the world today. Around 7,000 of those are from the Korean War, with another 1,600 missing from Vietnam and Southeast Asia. A staggering 72,000 are missing from World War II, a conflict in which sixteen million Americans served or about 12% of the population.

 

Here is a little of what we cover:

• How his 23 years of military service, including his deployments to Iraq and the Far East as a fighter pilot, saved his own life and have influenced him to support the mission of finding and returning fallen service members home. Derek holds more combat hours than hours in peaceful skies, and also served with the Marine Raiders in Afghanistan.
• WWII American troop discovery stories and first-hand insights on the overall recovery experience
• How families can be impacted by loss for generations after a war has ended
• Examples of how Project Recover leverages technology and partnerships with University of Delaware and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego in an attempt to find MIA soldiers
• How Derek’s values centered approach guides his professional and personal life

 

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Music by Rudy Vaughn