Omicron and DKE Honors its Fallen Hero on Memorial Day

04/28/2006

DKE International

Ann Arbor, Michigan

Rob Hornbeck, '05

Rob Hornbeck, O'05 voluntarily withdrew from school to serve his country in Iraq. There he served as a member of the Third Infantry Division.

At the end of his tour of duty, he returned home, was scheduled for discharge, had arranged to re-enter the University of Michigan, and had scheduled his wedding. Then he was suddenly killed in a tragic accident.

Rob's Omicron brothers were devastated by his loss, and vowed to honor his memory. They opened a scholarship in his memory, and ordered a tree, including a bronze plaque, planted in the front yard of the Deke house.

The tree is a disease resistant "Princeton Elm," a descendant of an ancestral tree dating to Revolutionary War times, standing in a cemetery in Princeton, New Jersey. It was cultivated in the Riveredge Farm in Atlanta, Georgia.

DKEs Chaplain, Bro. Alec Ream, now headquartered at the Shant in Ann Arbor, decorated the Hornbeck Elm to honor Rob's memory on Memorial Day, 2008, with the American Flag, the Deke Flag, picture of fellow Omicron veteran, Gerald R. Ford and other tributes.