August 30, 2011 
Philadelphia Inquirer|by Tom Infield
MARINE CORPS AIR STATION NEW RIVER, N.C. -- When her Marine boyfriend died in a helicopter crash off the Horn of Africa in 2006, Lesley Reed was lost.
Then a 21-year-old college dropout working at a Target store in Jacksonville, N.C., she had met her handsome sergeant, Jimmy Fordyce, of Newtown Square, Pa., through her brother, also a Marine. The two had been together six months when Fordyce left for his third overseas tour. He planned, when he got back, to quit the service. They'd move to Philadelphia. He'd get a job; she'd go back to school.
Then he was killed.
"I didn't have any reason to get up in the morning," Reed said. "I had no reason to live anymore. There was nothing for me to do."
After a loved one dies, everyone must find a way to cope. Reed immersed herself in Fordyce's memory -- by joining the Marines herself.
Read more at
Military.com.