Lt. Col. Jerry D. Dickerson Jr. grew up in Durant, graduated from Durant High School and earned an economics degree at Mississippi State in 1983.

He was the university's distinguished military graduate that year and received a regular Army commission in the field artillery. Pursuing a military career, he would serve his country at home and abroad in various assignments. He also would make time to complete a master's degree in industrial engineering at Texas A&M University.

Most recently, Dickerson was stationed at the Pentagon, putting his education to work for a four-star general in the planning and logistics area. That's where the 41-year-old was the morning of Sept. 11 when a terrorist-guided commercial passenger jet crashed into the five-sided national military command center in Arlington County, Va.

As of press time, Dickerson officially remained among those listed as missing.

In a tragic coincidence, Joe Ferguson, Dickerson's childhood best friend from Durant, was a passenger on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. Ferguson, a graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi, was a vice president of National Geographic.

Family members say Jerry Dickerson loved his family, the Army and his college alma mater. His father recalls that Jerry "always held his head high at the mention of Mississippi State" and never passed up a chance to return to campus on visits home.

One of his ambitions was to eventually return to MSU as professor of military science, head of the Army ROTC program.

The elder Mr. Dickerson says his son lived and died doing what he loved and what he believed in. "I wouldn't change a thing and Jerry wouldn't change a thing," he added.

Family members also say Dickerson, his wife Page, and children, Beth, 14, and Will, 11, proudly displayed their maroon and white colors no matter where they were stationed. They proudly dressed in full Bulldog regalia on game days, even when living thousands of miles away.

President Malcolm Portera paid tribute to Dickerson during a recent memorial service on the campus Drill Field for all who died in the mid-September attacks.