Zackery "Zack" Wells

Wells was a 2009 graduate of Crooked Oak High School and the first student from the district to be accepted into the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, according to The Oklahoman Archives.

He received recommendations from then-U.S. Representative Mary Fallin and U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe.

But Wells left West Point to be closer to friends and family. He went straight into basic training and advanced individual training last May with the Oklahoma Army National Guard, father Mike Weiss said.

“Through the National Guard, he could still realize his dream,” Weiss said.

Last week, Wells received his acceptance letter for the University of Central Oklahoma and their Reserve Officers' Training Corps program. He was set to start classes in the fall, Weiss said.

In the meantime, he had taken a sales position with an Oklahoma City car dealership and had just purchased a vehicle to drive to class. Wells would have gotten his new car on Monday, Weiss said.

“He had a pecking order. It was service, friends and family and his country,” mother Cherry Price said.

In high school, Wells played football and soccer, wrestled, ran track and also maintained a 3.5 grade-point average to keep his place in the National Honor Society, among other distinctions. He graduated in the top 5 percent of his class and came within 5 pounds of beating a world weightlifting record for his weight class while in high school, Weiss said.

‘Biggest heart'

“He was the smallest kid on every team he was on, but he had the biggest heart,” Price said.

He was a three-time winner of the President's Medal for Academic Excellence and state qualifier in wrestling and power lifting. He also had been accepted into an elite Air Force junior ROTC honors camp where he flew an airplane, Weiss said.

He would have turned 20 next month.

“He touched people from all over this country, but that's because God knew he only had one-fourth of the time to touch them in,” Price said.

“I can't open my mouth about him without a point of pride,” she said.

He was a lieutenant colonel in his high school junior Air Force ROTC, and a private first class with the 120th engineering battalion of the Army National Guard, but was qualified to and was expected to receive the rank of specialist in the near future, Weiss said.

Wells said in a 2009 interview with The Oklahoman that his long-term goal was to become a general.