Friday, June 02 2006 @ 04:33 PM EDT
Contributed by: River97
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 www.ecnnews.com -- SALEM — The day he left for Iraq, Benjamin Mejia left message on the dry erase board in his family's Mason Stree home
"Be good to each other," he wrote. "Know everything will be OK, and I'll be back."
Kathy Khan will never erase that message. It's the last one her son left.
Mejia died in Iraq on Wednesday after collapsing while working out. He was 25.
"Every time I talked to him he said, 'Don't worry, everything's going to be fine,'" his mother said yesterday. "He always told me, 'I'll get through anything.' "
It was easy to believe him. He was a young man who always managed to achieve his goals, no matter the obstacles, his family and friends said yesterday.
"Whatever he wanted, he got," his best friend Sandra Mulvany said. "He was very determined."
Mejia joined the Army in June of 2003, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. He knew right away he would be heading to Iraq.
"I looked at him and said, 'Are you crazy?' " his mother recalled. "He said, 'Mom, I want to help my country.' "
Mejia, an Army specialist, wanted to serve on the front lines — to "earn the right to call himself a combat veteran," Mulvany said — but instead he was assigned to a unit flying unmanned spy planes. He was due to come home in August.
A sharp dresser with a keen sense of style, Mejia was proud of the weight he had lost since joining the Army. He spent much of his free time there in the gym — where he went on Wednesday for a routine workout.
"He was in the gym working out (and) he collapsed," said Sgt. 1st Class Richard Guzofski, an Army spokesman. "They tried to revive him. He was evacuated to the hospital," where he died.
Guzofski said the Army will conduct an autopsy to determine the cause of death.
"I still can't believe he's not here," Khan said.
'The kid you want in an emergency'
Although he grew up in Salem, Mejia did not attend Salem High School. The only boy in a house full of women — his mother, grandmother and three sisters — Mejia was, his mother recalled fondly, a "terror." In need of a male role model, he moved to Florida at 15 to live with his father.
After high school, Mejia stayed in Florida and came to consider the state home. But he remained close to his Salem family; when his mother fell ill several years ago, he moved from Florida to Salem to be with her.
"He left all his friends, his father, everything," Khan recalled. "That kid moved and left everything he knew as home in three days."
Mejia had always been there when his family needed him. He once saved his mother's life with the Heimlich maneuver and twice rescued his sister from drowning in a swimming pool.
"This is the kind of kid you want in an emergency," his mother said.
But he also had another side. He would get down on the floor and play with his nieces and nephews. He was funny, with a dry sense of humor and an eye for irony. He talked about wanting to meet a woman he would love for her intelligence, not her looks.
"He was the guy all the girls wanted," Mulvany said.
'Making a difference'
Mejia's friends and family were surprised by his decision to join the Army, but Mulvany said he found himself in Iraq.
"When he went over to Iraq, that's when it really became (clear) in his eyes what the mission was about, meeting the Iraqi people and the children," Mulvany said. "I think he felt like he was making a difference, and that's him. He wants to make a difference. He wants to leave his mark."
Mulvany urged his younger sister to do the same.
"He wanted me to do something with my life," his sister Siobhan said. "He wanted me to follow what he did."
Mejia's own goals were simple. He planned to leave the Army when his commitment ended and return to Florida to start a business with his father. He wanted to get married and have children. Mulvany said he seemed ready to settle down.
"I watched him go from being a boy to being a man in the last three years," she said. "Once he went over to Iraq, it was just amazing to watch him grow up."
Mejia himself was aware of the change.
"I have grown up so much over the last few years," he wrote on his Web site last month. "I remember when I was 18 thinking I was grown up. Not quite. I am 25 years old now and more self aware than ever before. I think I have done more than I was ever expected to, and I'm not done yet. As a matter of fact, I'm just getting started." |
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I would like to say thank you for your service and sacrifice for our Country. And to your family, I wish to extend my deepest sympathy.
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