James Alan Cox Foundation Offers Additional, New Scholarships
AUSTIN, TX (August 17, 2009) – The James Alan Cox Foundation is now offering five new scholarships for college students in addition to the five high school awards they've previously awarded in memory of their son and brother, Jim Cox, an Arizona television photojournalist killed July 27, 2007, in a midair collision between two news helicopters above Steele Indian School Park in downtown Phoenix.
Jennifer Cox Bracksieck, one of the photojournalist's sisters and a member of the Cox Foundation board, told News Photographer magazine this week that in 2008 the foundation awarded five high-end cameras and three scholarships to college students. This year the foundation has added two more college awards, and the application for both high school and college students is online at their Web site, www.jamesalancoxfoundation.org.
The deadline for applying is October 15, 2009.
In July, on the second anniversary of the midair collision between Channel 3 and Channel 15's news helicopters that killed four journalists, a lawyer representing the Cox family and the family of pilot/reporter Scott Bowerbank told a Phoenix press conference that their lives "were not lost in vain" because of the important safety issues regarding news helicopters that are now being discussed (Read full coverage here).
The National Press Photographers Association's executive director, Jim Straight, took part in the press conference to re-state NPPA’s opposition – for safety reasons – to on-air reporting being done live by pilots who are also flying the aircraft. The pilots of both helicopters were reporting live, on the air, at the time of the crash. The Channel 3 helicopter occupied by Cox and Bowerbank was in a hovering position above a police story when it was struck from behind by Channel 15's helicopter, which was flying in a sweeping right-hand turn. Killed on the Channel 15 helicopter were photojournalist Rick Krolak and pilot/reporter Craig Smith.
At that same recent press conference attorney Patrick J. McGroder announced the settlement of a wrongful death lawsuit for an undisclosed amount against U.S. Helicopters, KNXV-TV, E.W. Scripps, and the estate of Craig Smith.
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