TYLER, Texas — Editor's Note: The attached video features the annual Patriot Day ceremony at Dr. Bryan C. Jack Elementary School.
Twenty-one years ago, more than 2,900 people lost their lives during the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, including a Tyler ISD alumnus and namesake of one of the district's elementary schools.
Robert E. Lee High School 1970 graduate Dr. Bryan C. Jack, a passenger on American Airlines Flight 77, was killed when the plane was flown into the Pentagon, crashing just 200 feet from his office.
He was the director of the programming and fiscal economics division in the Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Defense.
In 2007, when a new elementary school was built, it was named in his honor to become Dr. Bryan C. Jack Elementary School.
He was also the son of Tyler educators. Jack Elementary School’s mascot is the Patriot, and the school colors are red, white and blue.
While in high school, Jack was the highest-ranking male in his class and named the “most outstanding student” in math and science. He was also a National Merit Scholar and the male Presidential Scholar for the State of Texas.
Some of his duties a the Department of Defense included designing and maintaining the Future Years Defense Program and developing the fiscal guidance that the secretary of defense annually allocates funding to the military departments and defense agencies.
He first joined in the Defense Department as an analyst in PA&E’s Strategic Forces Division in 1978. His career featured significant contributions like the analysis of U.S.-Soviet positions in the SALT II and START negotiations, studies of force and program improvements for the NATO alliance and cost analysis of strategic and other weapons systems.
Jack received the Defense Exceptional Service Medal twice (in 1998 and 2000).
He graduated from the California Institute of Technology with honors in 1974 and studied in Japan as a Henry Luce Scholar. He earned an M.B.A. from Leland Stanford University in 1978, and a doctorate in economics from the University of Maryland in 1991.
In 2000, he was selected to be a professor of economics at the George Washington University.