The following information on Emmett M. Coxson comes from a very kind letter recently sent to me by Mr. Greg Coxson, son of Emmett M. Coxson:

Thanks for taking such an interest in the people buried in the (Gettysburg National) Cemetery.

My father was a good man who died too young. But what has always seemed right to me was the location of his grave. You see, my father's hero was Abraham Lincoln. When he died, he had a library full of books on Lincoln. Like Lincoln, my father was tall and skinny, about an inch shorter than Old Abe. He was also from Illinois. And now he lies not far from where Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address, in a beautiful shaded spot.

My father died in a car accident two weeks after assuming a job as first secretary at our embassy in Prague. The job was a promotion for him, after lots of hard work pursuing a masters degree in economics (not awarded), and studying a difficult language (Czech, for a year). When he died, we had to turn all our possessions around in shipment and return to the U.S. Our pastor heard about the annex opening up, and one of my father's friends who died about the same time was already buried there. The decision to bury his body there was brilliant. He is buried next to his friend as it turns out; they were two of the earliest burials in the annex.

My father was from a blue-collar family in a blue-collar neighborhood in Chicago. None of his childhood friends went to college. But his mother (who had been widowed with three children in the Depression) was one of those rare people who let their children follow their dreams even in the face of seeming impossibility. All three went to college, and my father finished in three years, in a hurry to help his mother make ends meet. He entered the Air Force, served in Korea, followed that up with work on some of the early computers, and then the foreign service, serving in Ecuador, Sudan, Romania, and Czechoslovakia.

Thanks and sincerely yours,
Greg Coxson

NOTE: Many thanks to Greg Coxson for the very nice letter.


OBITUARY FOR EMMETT M. COXSON

Emmett Coxson, husband of the former Betty Yealy of the Littlestown area, died instantly Tuesday as a result of an automobile accident in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Mr. Coxson was a principal commercial officer for the United States State Department Foreign Service, and had been in Prague for only two weeks of a two-year assignment.

Mrs. Coxson is the daughter of Mrs. J. Edgar Yealy and the late Mr. Yealy.

Mr. Coxson is survived by his wife and four children; Gregory, Kristin, Susan, and Andrea, at home; his sister, Miss Betty Coxson, and a brother, Richard, of California.

Funeral arrangements are incomplete.

(From THE GETTYSBURG TIMES, Thursday, July 13, 1972)


EMMETT COXSON BURIAL TUESDAY.

Graveside services will be held Tuesday afternoon at 2 o'clock in the Gettysburg National Cemetery for Emmett M. Coxson, 42, husband of the former Betty Yealy, Littlestown R. 1, who died last Tuesday in Prague, Czechoslovakia, where he was First Secretery of the U.S. Embassy.

Mr. Coxson was fatally injured in an automobile accident near Prague as he was returning to his home after attending a trade fair. He also was chief of the embassy's
economic section, and had moved his family from Alexandria, Virginia to Prague 13 days before his death.

He joined the Foreign Service in 1957 after five years as an Air Force officer, and had completed tours of duty in Ecuador, Sudan, and Romania prior to the Prague assignment.

Funeral services were held this afternoon at the Good Shepherd Church, Alexandria, Virginia.

Mrs. Coxson, daughter of Mrs. J. Edgar Yealy and the late Mr. Yealy, survives with their four children.

(From THE GETTYSBURG TIMES, Monday, July 17, 1972)