When Lt. Col. Jeffry Blake got the news that it was Lt. Col. Morris "Moose" Fontenot who died in the F-15C crash Aug. 27 in rural western Virginia, he and members of the 131st Fighter Squadron, under the 104th Fighter Wing at Barnes Air National Guard Base, Massachusetts, immediately banded together to support Fontenot's family.

The 131st commander, who purchased a "Boston Strong" T-shirt last year as part of a fundraiser for the victims of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, thought a similar fundraiser — a T-shirt with Fontenot's call sign, "Moose" — could benefit Fontenot's wife, Kara, and his daughters, Natalie and Nicole.

"I was lying awake in bed thinking, 'What can I do, what can the squadron do, what can the wing do, what can the Air Force do?' ... and [thinking] Moose's legacy is that everyone considers him a friend," Blake said in an interview with Air Force Times. "Everybody knows him, everybody wants to be like him, and that's when I thought, if we do a T-shirt that lets the world know that … Moose was one of their bros."

Fontenot was an F-15 instructor pilot with more than 2,300 flight hours. He graduated from Air Force Weapons School and had flown the F-15 for more than 17 years, according to the wing. He had joined the Massachusetts Air National Guard in February and also served as the wing's inspector general.

On Aug. 27, he was en route to Louisiana when he radioed an emergency at about 9:05 a.m. local time and lost radio contact with air traffic controllers. When investigators were finally able to safely enter the crash site after more than 30 hours of searching the mountainous area, they discovered Fontenot had never managed to eject from his aircraft.

Blake said that in the fighter pilot world, there is no higher compliment than if someone considers you a bro. The squadron launched the fundraiser just days after Fontenot's death to "honor their bro."

Blake was more than pleasantly surprised when more than 1,620 "Moose's Bro Never Forget" T-shirts were sold and $44,400 in donations were collected. A second T-shirt fitted for women raised an additional $7,080.

"This is unreal. I personally thought maybe 300 shirts would sell, but we passed 1,500 so quickly," Blake said. Thanks to social media, the fundraiser reached retired Air Force members, Army vets, family members and hundreds of F-15 pilots, Blake said.

"It's literally been that strong military family looking out for each other and it's just been phenomenal," Blake said. "I'm proud to be a part of that military family taking care of each other."

The success of this fundraiser, piloted through crowdfunding website Booster.com at https://www.booster.com/moosetshirt, has Blake thinking of more T-shirt campaigns, which he hopes to run a couple of months during the year for the Fontenots, particularly for the daughters' college fund. Natalie is a sophomore in high school; Nicole, a freshman.

"There's other talk — his birthday is close to Veterans Day — so we're going to try to have a local, 5K road race with maybe a dinner afterward," Blake said. Participants can register for the run at http://www.rallyformoose.org/. The run would be an annual event in Massachusetts, Blake said.

Fontenot's burial is Oct. 3 at the Air Force Academy, his alma mater, in Colorado Springs, Colo.

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