On Sept. 11, 2001, Eric W. Slebodnik stewed with anger as planes crashed into iconic buildings on American soil and terror gripped his country.
The senior at Revival Baptist Christian School in Scranton, fulfillment of his hopes and dreams still ahead, had to do something.
"He knew that he had to be involved in protecting our nation from this ever occurring again," his mother, Cynthia Slebodnik, said Tuesday.
Her son signed up for the Army National Guard. Four years later, Sgt. Eric Slebodnik was on patrol only 17 days after the fourth anniversary of Sept. 11 near Ramadi, Iraq. A roadside bomb exploded, and insurgents attacked. Sgt. Slebodnik and four other local soldiers died.
From then on, her son was forever 21, Mrs. Slebodnik thought, but in her eyes he lived far longer than that.
"According to the Bible, the number seven stands for completion," Mrs. Slebodnik said. "So Eric actually lived three complete sets of lives."
As she commemorated Sept. 11 at the McDade Park memorial, Mrs. Slebodnik explained her son to about 100 other veterans, firefighters, police officers and others who gathered for the local 9/11 committee's annual remembrance.
It was one of many remembrances across the region, state and country on the 11th anniversary of terrorists' attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and their failed attack on the U.S. Capitol, one thwarted in the skies of western Pennsylvania. The local remembrances included Jessup Hose Company 2 setting up 343 flags to honor each of the firefighters who died when the trade center towers collapsed.
As Mrs. Slebodnik spoke, lush green grass enveloped the hillside behind her and a few puffy white clouds floated across a bright blue sky as an insistent sun illuminated the evocation of memories below.
It was a day a lot like 9/11, event organizer Charles Spano recalled.
Mrs. Slebodnik said she has grown more comfortable speaking about her son publicly.
This does not mean she is over his death.
In a voice that quivered at times, she remembered the boy who went from "scribbling to writing poetry, essays and stories, from playing with toy guns and soldiers to working his way up from a Pfc. to sergeant" and training in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, she said.
He grew into, she said, "a student of life" who "lived what he believed and believed what he lived."
"In that short lifetime, he accomplished more than I have in my 55 years of life," Mrs. Slebodnik said.
In time, she said, memorials to soldiers "will be just that - memorials."
"It's our duty to keep those stories alive for generations to come because there will come a generation that will just read 9/11 as being something that we have to learn in our history class," she said.
Later, Scranton firefighter Michael Stine tolled a bell - three series of three tolls, fellow city firefighter James Sable said, to remember the firefighters who died in the line of duty.
The tolls represent the end of an emergency and a firefighter's "return to quarters," Mr. Sable said.
After a rifle salute cracked the silence and a bugler blew taps, Ted Androkavitz, 84, of Scranton, an Army combat veteran of the Korean War who spent life after war fixing elevators, said civilians should remember, but veterans must - and combat veterans most of all.
They wake up at night restless, sometimes screaming, only medication soothing ugly memories of battle.
"You can't forget," Mr. Androkavitz said.
Contact the writer: bkrawczeniuk@ timesshamrock.com