Armstrong mother's son was Western Pennsylvania's first casualty in Iraq

The dreams were so vivid, Freddie Jackson would see the church, the preacher, and her son's casket.

She'd wake up, startled, and sit straight up on her bed.

"Lord, what are you trying to tell me?" Jackson would ask out loud.

About a month later, Jackson's son, Army Staff Sgt. Stevon A. Booker, was killed in Baghdad.

"The Lord was trying to prepare me," says Jackson, 61, of Kiski Township in Armstrong County. "You don't want to hear you're about to lose a child."

Booker's death on April 5, 2003, came barely 15 days after the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was the first soldier from Western Pennsylvania killed in the war.

Four years later, his mother says she is still hurt by the fact that she couldn't see her son one last time.

When his remains arrived in the United States, three weeks after his death, the caretaker at the funeral home said her son's body was not in a condition to be seen.

"I wanted to see my son's face," she says. But his head was wrapped in white linen. His whole head was ripped off. So I'm glad I didn't look at it. I know that would linger with me."

Booker, a tank commander with the heavy, armored forces of the 3rd Infantry Division, was 34 years old.

His platoon of Abrams tanks had been moving along a highway toward Baghdad International Airport when it came under fire from heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

Booker, known to everyone as "Book" or "Steve," had been pushed into the military by his mother soon after he graduated from Apollo-Ridge High School in 1987.

"I told him 'Why not join the Army and see the whole world for free and get an education?' " says Jackson, a cook at the West Haven Nursing Home in Apollo. "But he literally made the final decision."

In 16 years in the service, Booker indeed traveled the world -- living in Korea, Germany, California and Kentucky -- and his mother would only see him every three years or so.

When he came home, Booker, tall and thin and with striking hazel eyes, would wear his Army uniform the whole time.

"You could see your face in his shoes," Jackson says. "I was the proudest mother."

When her son died, Jackson didn't want to see anyone. She couldn't leave her house -- not even to sit on her front porch.

"It's like someone ripped my heart out," she says. "It still hasn't sunk in."

Today, she says she doesn't feel as sad but that she'll never get over her son's death. She has developed nurturing friendships with local mothers who've also lost their sons in the war. If they can't get together once a month, she sends them a card, to let them know she's thinking about them.

"You don't know what it's like to lose a son, to lose a part of you," she says.

With money she received after her son's death, Jackson added a 10-foot addition to her modest house.

"He always wanted me to buy a house," she says. "I could live with a penny in a shack if I could have him back."

The favorite part of her house is a wall-to-wall wooden bookcase that dominates her living room and is filled with pictures and mementos of her son.

The bookcase is the first thing Jackson can see when she walks out of her first-floor bedroom in the morning.

"Good morning, son," she'll say, looking at his photos.

She never tires of talking about her son, and how proud she is of everything he accomplished.

"He died for all of us," she says.