Project Recover Receives Friends of NYS Military Museum’s 2026 Preserving Our Military Heritage Award

The Friends of the New York State Military Museum recently announced that Project Recover, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to searching for and locating American service members missing in action from past conflicts around the world, is the 2026 recipient of the Friends’ Preserving Our Military Heritage Award.

The award recognizes a wide variety of exceptional projects and publications that contribute to the understanding and remembrance of the rich military heritage of New York State

Derek Abbey, Ph.D., the president and CEO of Project Recover, will receive the award during a ceremony being held at 11 a.m. Friday, Nov. 13, at the New York State Military Museum and Veterans Research Center located at 61 Lake Avenue in Saratoga Springs.

Project Recover works with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) and a network of research institutions and partners to find and repatriate American military members missing in action since World War II in order to provide recognition and closure for families and the nation.

“New York’s military heritage is woven deeply into the history of our nation, and I am humbled to receive an award dedicated to preserving that legacy,” said Abbey, who lives in Bend, Oregon. “New York reminds us that military heritage is not simply about battles and places; it is about people, their service, their sacrifice, and the responsibility we inherit to remember them.”

“Project Recover is a truly remarkable organization that is doing incredibly meaningful work to search and recover the remains of America’s missing service members from past conflicts,” said Mark O’Rourke, an Army veteran who’s president of the Board of Trustees of The Friends of the New York State Military Museum. “We’re proud to bestow the 2026 award to Project Recover, which has gone to great lengths to assist the U.S. military and other trusted institutions in the profoundly noble mission of finding and recovering the remains of our nation’s fallen heroes around the globe.”

Project Recover traces its roots to the 1990s, when biotechnology executive Dr. Pat Scannon, a former U.S. Army Medical Corps major, founded The BentProp Project after scuba diving on WWII wreck sites in the Republic of Palau, where some of the Pacific war’s fiercest battles occurred. The BentProp Project changed its name to Project Recover in 2018, two years after forming a partnership with the University of Delaware College of Earth Ocean and Environment and the Scripps Institute of Oceanography.

Dr. Scannon served as president of Project Recover until 2019, when retired U.S. Marine Corps Major Derek Abbey took over as president and CEO. Dr. Scannon continues to serve as director and president emeritus at Project Recover.

Abbey began his military career as an enlisted communications Marine before earning selection to the Marine Enlisted Commissioning Education Program. He attended Oregon State University, where he studied history and graduated magna cum laude before receiving his commission as a Marine officer.

Abbey became a naval flight and weapons systems officer flying missions in the F/A-18D Hornet. His service in operational fighter-attack squadrons included deployments during Operation Southern Watch and Operation Iraqi Freedom. In all, he flew nearly 400 combat missions during his career. He retired from the Marine Corps in 2014 after 23 years of service that also included assignments with Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command.

Since Abbey assumed leadership of Project Recover in 2019, the organization has expanded its operations to include supporting missions and research across more than 25 countries. The organization works closely with the DPAA, the Pentagon office responsible for accounting for missing U.S. service members from past conflicts.

Project Recover’s team of historians, archaeologists, divers, scientists and volunteers works to locate and document the final resting places of American service members still missing in action. Their search missions span the Pacific to Europe, where aircraft crash sites and shipwrecks hold the answers families have waited decades for.

Today, Project Recover has grown into more than 100 search missions across 25-plus countries. Their database holds more than 700 cases connected to over 3,000 missing Americans, with more than 200 documented sites still awaiting recovery. So far, the work has helped bring 31 service members home to their families.