Freedom Remembered

Born: January 7, 1966 in Maryland
Died: November 13, 2009 in Afghanistan

Spc Christopher J. Coffland of Baltimore, Maryland is the son of Dave and Toni Coffland. He was a 1984 Gilman School graduate and earned an undergraduate degree from Washington and Lee University in 1988. He spent his life counseling, coaching, traveling, and studying people and cultures, at one point pursuing anthropology graduate work that took him to Gabon, Africa. A month before he turned 42, the enlistment age limit, he signed up to become an Army intelligence specialist. He had considered military service many times and had won an appointment to West Point but declined because of the six-year commitment. Christopher played professional football in Finland, coached football in Australia and lacrosse at Boys’ Latin School of Maryland, worked as a university counselor at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles, tended bar in Baltimore, studied anthropology at Washington State University, lived with Pygmies in Africa. He had trained for more than a year for his mission in Afghanistan. He and two Marines were killed when the vehicle they were in exploded in the Sayed Abud region, where they were investigating another blast. In addition to his parents and sister, Lynn, he is survived by sisters Karen and Laurie and a brother, David. He was 43.
Army
323rd Military Intelligence Battalion
Fort Meade, Maryland

Burial is at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia – Sec 60 Site 895

The Spc Christopher James Coffland by Freedom Remembered, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.