Photo by Chris Taggart

In 1989, Sergeant William Delaney Gibbs was killed in combat in Panama as he participated in Operation Just Cause, which was set to remove Manuel Noriega from power. Gibbs was 22 years old and just months away from becoming a dad to a baby girl due that March.

“That was a tough one for all of us, just thinking about what was going to happen to that little girl and who was going to take care of her,” says David Kim (MBA 1994), a graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point who was also a part of that unit.

Gibbs and the family he left behind never strayed far from Kim’s mind as he returned home and pursued a career in business, first as partner at Butler Capital in New York and later as global co-head of investor relations with Apax Partners. As he and his wife, Cynthia, began to move through their lives, having children of their own, he continued to think of the daughter Gibbs left behind and couldn’t shake the feeling that he had to do something for children like her.

Together, the couple launched the Children of Fallen Patriots Foundation to provide scholarships and educational counseling to military children who lost a parent in the line of duty. Kim’s hope is to bring awareness to the needs of these families. To date, the foundation has provided $33 million in support to 1,600 students. Kim wants to reach all students, but concedes they can be difficult to find. “The government tracks some of that data in chunks, but not all of it.” Research estimates that 20,000 dependents have been left behind by troops killed in the line of duty over the past 35 years, says Kim. With those kinds of numbers, Children of Fallen Patriots figures that, after government help, the gap is half a billion dollars. “So that’s the total we’re going after,” he says.

Through grants, fundraising with individuals and large corporate partners, and partnerships with Veterans Affairs, the nonprofit continues to see increases in its gifts to families and the number of people the organization is able to find and assist.

The emotional reward for the Kims is enormous, and sometimes they get to see it firsthand. Kim thinks of Jervon Lemon, a scholarship administrator on his team. After her father, Sergeant Jerome Lemon, was killed in Iraq in 2004, Children of Fallen Patriots stepped in to help fund her college education. Today, she speaks to the kids who are just like her. “So she’s on the phone with her peers, helping them connect with our aid,” observes Kim. “That kind of personal support is a big part of our mission.”

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