Leer en espa\u00f1ol<\/a><\/p>\nArmy Reserve Capt. Cody Khork was killed when Iran used a drone to strike at U.S. forces in Kuwait in the first hours of the war.<\/p>\n
He was 35 years old.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe met though the fraternity and through ROTC and kind of — we just clicked from day one and we\u2019ve just been best friends ever since,\u201d Abbas Jaffer said. <\/p>\n
Jaffer said Khork will always be his best friend. The two met at Florida Southern College in Lakeland.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was very accepting,\u201d Jaffer said. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t care what you look like, you know, what you do, where you come from. He just kind of accepts you for, you know, just who you are.\u201d<\/p>\n
They remained close after college with Khork always ready to lend a hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were times when we lived together in school and outside of school where I couldn\u2019t pay for my part of the utilities or I couldn\u2019t pay my part of the rent,\u201d Jaffer said. \u201cAnd he, you know, didn\u2019t have very much money himself and he would still, you know, he would be like, \u2018AJ, it\u2019s going to be alright. We\u2019ll figure it out.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
When Jaffer got married, Khork was by his side.<\/p>\n
And when he died, he and Khork\u2019s family worked together to honor his memory.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we were kind of thinking of things that we wanted to do to honor him, and you know the first thing we could think of that could last forever, just like giving to everyone, was a scholarship,\u201d Jaffer said. <\/p>\n
The Captain Cody Khork ROTC Scholarship will go to a Florida Southern College student who embodies his leadership and compassion.<\/p>\n
His father, James said, \u201cthere\u2019s no greater heartbreak than losing a son. With that said, there\u2019s no greater pride in knowing who he was and what he stood for.\u201d<\/p>\n
To donate to the scholarship fund, click here. <\/a><\/p>\nCopyright 2026 by WPLG Local10.com – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAKELAND, Fla. \u2014 Thirteen Americans have died in the war with Iran. One of those soldiers is from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-191693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}