Regents want ultimate sacrifice honored

Jennifer Knight

Friday, April 18, 2003 | 9:07 a.m.

Several members of the state Board of Regents want the families of Nevada's fallen warriors to rest easy when it comes to putting their kids through college.

The two war veterans on the board, Regents Tom Kirkpatrick and Jack Lund Schofield, want to consider offering families of military personnel killed in battle free tuition at any Nevada institution.

"We just both wanted to do something for these people who gave the ultimate sacrifice," said Kirkpatrick, who served in both World War II and the Korean War.

University and Community College System officials are still researching the proposal. If regents go forward with the action, the beneficiaries would be the families of two Marines who died during battles in Iraq last month.

Lance Cpl. Donald J. Cline Jr., 21, of Sparks was killed March 23, and 2nd Lt. Frederick E. Pokorney Jr., 31, died March 25. Cline's wife and two sons as well as Pokorney's wife and daughter would receive free tuition at any Nevada institution under the proposal.

The board acted in March to offer free tuition to the wife and three sons of space shuttle Columbia pilot Willie McCool, who died in the shuttle's Feb. 1 crash over Texas.

Traditionally, regents have extended this gesture to Nevada natives, but an exception was made with McCool, who resided in Texas, because his parents live in Las Vegas.

Regent Steve Sisolak said the death of Nevada's two Marines should prompt the board to discuss whether such benefits should also be extended to families of police officers, firefighters and others who die in service.

"I'm very much in favor of giving the waivers, but I think we need to decide who we are going to extend these benefits to," Sisolak said. "We need to get a handle on this."

In the past, free tuition has been offered to the families of: four Thunderbird pilots who died in a crash at Indian Springs in 1982; two Nellis airmen who died in a Lincoln County air disaster in 1998; and University of Nevada, Reno Police Sgt. George Sullivan, who was murdered in 1998.

In the case of the Marines, however, families will already receive tuition benefits through the federal government.

The spouses or children of any Nevadan disabled or killed in battle are already entitled to $680 a month to attend college full-time and $340 a month for part-time attendance, according to the office of Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev.

Even with those benefits, Schofield said, he would still like the board to extend its own offer.

"During the war everybody is hyped up, and patriotic people are in a really giving mood, and then afterwards when you have peace for a while, they're kind of forgotten," said Schofield, who was a World War II pilot. "Those people are never going to see their beautiful loved ones again. As far as I'm concerned, we can't do enough for them."