BYU Graduate Killed in Afghanistan

Friends and family will be holding funeral services this week in Mesa, Ariz., for Army Capt. Cory J. Jenkins, a BYU graduate who was killed in Southern Afghanistan last Tuesday.

Jenkins and three other U.S. soldiers were killed after their vehicle hit an improvised explosive device.

Before he was deployed in mid-July, Jenkins lived with his wife, Brooke, and 2-month-old daughter, Reagan, in Steilacoom, Wash.

Jenkins’s wife and mother praised him for his life of service and adventurous spirit.

“He is certainly a hero in our eyes,” said his mother, Jeanne Jenkins. “He was able to do everything he wanted to do.”

Cory Jenkins graduated from BYU in 2003 with a bachelor’s degree in conservation biology and completed a physician’s assistant program at A.T. Still University. After graduating from BYU, he met his wife Brooke, a graduate of Arizona State University.

Brooke said her husband’s BYU education helped him become the person he was, one who loved life and loved to learn and serve.

“My husband loved going to BYU,” his wife said. “He felt like that was a great preparation for his service in the military. It taught him life lessons that he couldn’t have learned otherwise.”

Before he left, Cory Jenkins was the scoutmaster in his ward, which his mother said was his dream job.

“He loved scouting and he loved the youth,” she said. “He didn’t have to have a calling and an assignment to do things with them. He was the neighborhood friend … if you knew Cory, you were his friend.”

Continuing with his life of service, he enlisted in the military to serve as a physician’s assistant helping to stabilize and treat injured soldiers.

“His biggest delight in life was serving other people, and he figured being a physician’s assistant would be the best way,” said his father, Stanley Jenkins, in an interview with the East Valley Tribune in Mesa, Ariz. 

Cory Jenkins’ mother said his military service was also characteristic of his patriotism and love of fellow man.

“He has always had the desire to go into the military,” she said. “He considered it a duty and an honor. He was a very patriotic man and a man of service. So it was not unordinary for that to be something he chose to do.”

Cory Jenkins’s name will be added to the Memorial Hall in the Wilkinson Center, which honors BYU alumni from the 20th and 21st centuries who have given their lives in the armed services.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with his family right now,” said BYU spokeswoman Carri Jenkins.

This article was originally published in the Daily Universe on August 30, 2009.