A few months before Christmas 2004, I received an email from Laura Cox, the daughter of  Major George W. Cox, Jr. USMC (Ret).  Major Cox was LtCol. Egene R. Brady's Executive Officer from 10 May 1969 until 5 Aug 1969 at which time he assumed the responsibilities of Operations Officer which he held until reassigned on 22 Sep 1969 as the Assistant Air Officer for the First Marine Division.  I recall meeting briefly with Major Cox when assuming his office of Operations Officer for the squadron.  I believe his best advice to a retread Reservist coming back on active duty, after nine years broken service, was to pay attention to and learn from squadron's combat hardened officer and enlisted Marines.  He further assured me that if I did so it wouldn't take long to become an asset to the command.

Laura explained how her father continued to express his memories of serving with the Purple Foxes and the admiration he held for all who served with him in HMM-364.  She indicated her father had a Honda SUV and had mentioned he would like to sport a spare tire cover with the squadron's logo on it.  I sent Laura a diskette containing a high resolution image of the vinyl stickers I had purchased from the active duty squadron as well as two stickers to present to him.  She made me swear I would not mention anything about the squadron stickers if George should ask.  What follows is Laura's last communication:

"Frank, as promised, I have attached a couple of photos taken of my father, George Cox, with the new Purple Fox logo on his car.

I think I told you in my original email that I expected he would get all misty-eyed over this gift and he came through for me on Christmas morning.  Thank you so much for helping me to do this for him.  I have given him many gifts over the years, but I suspect this may be the gift that he has most wanted.

I found it difficult to locate a company who could do the actual printing for me.  When I had about given up, my daughter located a local business that specialized in doing the printing for graphics on semi trucks.  When I phoned them to tell them what I was trying to do, the owner said, "One way or the other we will get this done for you in time for Christmas".  He warned me that they were quite busy and wouldn't be able to get to it for a couple of weeks, but promised to have it done more than a week before Christmas.  I went to take the diskette with the logo to them and found they were actually quite a large company and were responsible for doing the work for huge fleets across the US, such as McDonald's, Sprint, etc.  I was definitely feeling like I was wasting their time, but the man who did all the graphic work said, "I'm a veteran and we're going to make this happen for your dad".  They were amazing to take the time away from their business to help me with this little project, but there sure are a lot of nice people in the world, aren't there?

Thank you again for your part in helping to make this happen!

Laura Cox"