Navy sent Utah native to university for engineering degree

Jeffrey Ammon, a 2001 graduate of Oregon State University and a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, was killed earlier this week in military service in Afghanistan.

Ammon, of Orem, Utah, died May 20 from injuries suffered from an improvised explosive device. He was working as a member of a provincial reconstruction team in Ghazni.

Ammon, 37, received a bachelor of science degree in nuclear engineering from OSU and was highly regarded by both faculty and fellow students.

“Jeff was already in the Navy’s submarine service when they sent him to the university to get an undergraduate degree in nuclear engineering and prepare him for a career as an officer,” said Steven Reese, director of the OSU Radiation Center.

“That’s something they do only for their best and brightest people. Jeff was just extraordinarily talented, one of the best scholars we’ve ever had. He received a license as a nuclear reactor operator while still an OSU undergraduate student, which is quite unusual.”

Ammon was also popular with other students “and just a great person,” Reese said. “We will miss him very much.”

“Our program sees quite a few students with military ties … As faculty, we are well aware of what their military service could require of these students, but it’s not something you expect to happen,” said Kathryn Higley, a nuclear engineering professor who was Ammon’s adviser at OSU.

Ammon was attached to the Navy Region Northwest out of Bangor, Wash., and had been in Afghanistan for 14 months, according to Navy spokesman Sean Hughes.

He enlisted in the Navy in 1988 in Orem and had been an engineer on the Bangor-based submarine Alabama.

The Defense Department said Ammon was working in Ghanzi in support of the military’s economic mission in Afghanistan by making micro loans to small businesses.

Ammon’s wife and two children will hold a private funeral service, Hughes said.