Michael Maxwell

A Celebration of Life for Mike Maxwell will be held at the Jim Gaston Visitor Center at the Bull Shoals-White River State Park on Friday August 14th from 11AM to 1PM with a Memorial Service and Military Honors at 11:30AM. Reverend Nancy Taylor will officiate. Mike died August 5, 2009 at Hospice of the Ozarks Hospice House. He was 66 years old.

Mike was born at Childress, Texas, and served as a Recon Marine during two combat tours of Vietnam. He later served as a Special Forces Major in Intelligence, commanding a B-Team(5 A-Teams). Mike Maxwell's career began in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department then later spanned the East and West Coasts where he was the Director of Public Safety for Terminal Island Naval Complex, Chief of Police of a civilian police force which protected a major nuclear installation in the Northeast and later he was a Senior Instructor at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.

Upon retirement from federal service, Mike provided administrative operational help in the countries of East Timor, Indonesia among other Muslim strongholds until being assigned to the police mission in Iraq after the war grew more intense. He managed the Instructor Development Unit in Baghdad; he was assigned as Director of Ramadi and Al Asad Regional Police Academies. Mike went on to become the Lead Instructor for the Executive Leadership course, ending his police career in the Middle East while the Lead Instructor for the Intelligence Analyst Training agency, Iraq's "FBI". Mike was a certified Department of Justice Master Instructor and was one of seven Americans awarded Honorary Doctorates during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
His final police assignment was training the Presidential Protection Detail for the President of Liberia, Africa, under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of State.

Mike was medically evacuated out of Iraq after contracting colon cancer and spent three years battling the disease while training Arkansas police forces pro-bono. He authored a long selling book for security managers who were challenged to write manuals (Publisher, Abbott-Langer, Chicago) His passion was writing and he authored "Countermeasures Against Terrorism, A Guide for Public and Private Managers" and was working on a novel drawn from this long standing mission in Indonesia. Mike loved German bread Dobermans and had a collection of cats.

Mike is survived by his wife, national police issues journalist, Helen Maxwell. In lieu of flowers Memorials may be made to the Bull Shoals or Lakeview Police Department. Arrangements are by Kirby & Family Funeral & Cremation Services. Please visit on online obituary and guestbook and kirbyandfamily.com