leonard hennessy

My family came to Augusta in 1968 when my dad got hired at the Tracy-Luckey Pecan Company in Harlem. I finished Aquinas High School in 1987, then got my BA from UNC Charlotte in English in 1992. After working my way through grad school at Embry-Riddle, I was accepted into Navy Officer Candidate School in 1995.

As a Naval Flight Officer in the EA-6B Prowler, I flew off of aircraft carriers in the skies of Iraq and Former Yugoslavia. From 2009-2012, I flew Open Skies Treaty (OST) missions over Russia and later served as a Military Advisor to the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C. with periodic assignments to the U.S. Diplomatic Mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

My wife, Natasha, was from Belgrade, Serbia, and had lived through the conflict there in the '90s. In our time, she'd fought breast cancer twice. After an 18-month battle, I lost her on August 11, 2014. She was 37 and working on her PhD at the University of Maryland.

I couldn't have had a better partner: she always made me laugh and was very proud to be a "navy wife."