Cody (Philip C.) Ford reported killed by I.E.D.

Philip Cody Ford always wanted to be in the Army, When he was only four or five years old he amazed his mother by asking, “When I die in the war, who will get my flag?”

Monday his twin brother, Tanner, was home from college when officials came to tell his family that the 21-year-old specialist had been killed Sunday in Iraq.

His mother, Marcia Self, speaking by telephone from her home near West Columbia, said Army officials offered few details Monday.

“He was in a HUMMV that was hit by a bomb,” she said. He was stationed in the Baghdad area. Two other soldiers were injured, she was told. She said officials promised more details later.

Her son, who was usually called Cody, joined the Army soon after he graduated from Brazosport High School in Freeport in 2004. He was part of an airborne unit, she said.

He had spent a year in Alaska, where he enjoyed snowboarding and other winter sports. He had long been an outdoorsman, his mother said, particularly enjoying hunting.

In October he was sent to Kuwait and then to Iraq. He had been there for about a month and a half, she said. “He was trying to decide if he wanted to make a career of the army,” she said.

“I just can’t believe this happened,” Self said. “It’s just the worst thing you can think of.”

Self said she had no idea what made her son, as a very small boy, ask about what would happen after he was killed in a war.

“I told him that if he was married, his wife would get his flag,” she said.

“He said, ‘Oh, no, Mama, you have to make sure that my father gets my flag.’"

Her son was estranged from his wife, Margie, who lives in Freeport, she said.
Plans have not yet been made for his funeral, Self said.

Ford is also survived by his father, Philip Ford, of Freeport, stepfather, John Self of West Columbia and two other brothers and four sisters.

From KHOU