Airman Cuddeback Remembered

The atmosphere seemed appropriate for a young man who lived and breathed hockey.

Held in a drafty, cavernous hangar, Thursday’s midmorning memorial service for Airman 1st Class Zachary Cuddeback was a chilly send-off for a guy described as bright, upbeat and energetic. The temperature inside the building resembled that of a hockey rink, a venue favored by Cuddeback, who played the sport in college for a year before joining the Air Force.

“He never seemed to have a bad day,” Master Sgt. Brian Fitzsimmons, a supervisor, said of Cuddeback prior to the start of the service at Ramstein Air Base.

Cuddeback “was a pretty incredible kid,” Fitzsimmons added. “That’s what makes this so painful. The kid was so full of life.”

That life ended last week when an armed ethnic Albanian from Kosovo, a Muslim man said to have been radicalized in recent months, boarded a U.S. military bus at Frankfurt international airport and began firing. Cuddeback, the bus driver, was shot and killed along with Senior Airman Nick Alden, 25. Two other airmen were wounded.

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