 News Journal -- Army Pfc. Stephen P. “Stevie” Snowberger, a former student at William Penn High School who grew up in Bear, was killed Thursday near Baghdad when a roadside bomb exploded as the Humvee he was riding in passed.
Snowberger, 18, was a member of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division at the time of his death. He was the third serviceman with Delaware ties killed by fighting in Iraq this month.
 “We never told Stevie goodbye when we talked to him on the phone …,” said his mother, Debbie Brown, who now lives in North Carolina. “It was always ‘see you later.’ We always expected he’d be back.”
Snowberger was killed less than a month after he returned to Iraq from a 15-day leave he spent with friends and family.
Snowberger’s uncle, John Loveland, who always ended their conversations by telling his nephew, “later, dude,” spoke for many of the family with a simple declaration.
“He is our hero,” he said.
Snowberger made friends easily, his mother said. Since news of his death, she has received e-mails from almost two dozen people that she doesn’t know.
“They all knew him and liked him and wanted to express their condolences,” Brown said. “It’s all been very touching.”
Miles Coleman sent one of those e-mails.
Coleman, an Army Reservist from Florida, was returning home in uniform when he met Snowberger in a New York airport.
They talked for a couple of hours, swapping stories about life in the Army. When it was time for them to go their separate ways, Coleman asked Snowberger to stay in touch. He did, up until the day he died.
“I want you to know that he was a good soldier,” Coleman wrote to Brown.
Although his parents now live in North Carolina, Snowberger still has family in Delaware.
A funeral service for Snowberger will be held Friday at the Beeson Funeral Home on Pulaski Highway. The viewing will be from 10 a.m. to noon. The service will follow immediately after. There will be no burial.
“He always said that he definitely didn’t want to be buried,” his mother said.
He will be cremated, she said.
“And then,” she said, “we’ll take him home.”
Thursday’s blast also claimed the life of Pfc. Eric Clark, 22, who was riding with Snowberger.
“We didn’t know him, but Stevie did and our family sends its deepest sympathy to his,” Brown said. “We want them to know that we understand how they feel.”
Both men were assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 6th Field Artillery Regiment, 10th Mountain Division, Fort Drum, N.Y.
Snowberger attended William Penn until he was 16, when, his mother said, she pulled him out of school and enrolled him in the Red Rock Job Corps in Pennsylvania. Snowberger spent about a year at the center.
A program of the U.S. Department of Labor, the Job Corps is an education and vocational training program that helps young people get a better job and regain control of their lives by teaching them a trade and helping them earn a high school diploma or GED.
It was at Red Rock that Snowberger decided he wanted to continue his studies. He joined the Army, his mother said, because of the opportunity it offered him for an education.
His mother said she was hesitant when he first told her he was enlisting.
“I said to him, ‘You know what’s going on right now, don’t you?’ And he said, ‘Mom, I’m not afraid of the sandbox.’ That’s how he was,” she said.
Because her son joined the Army at 17, he could have retired at 37, Brown said.
“That was something we talked about. He thought that if he stayed in he’d have his education and still be young enough to do something else,” she said.
On May 6, 21-year-old Marine Cpl. Cory Palmer of Seaford died of injuries suffered when his Humvee was hit by an explosive near Fallujah. A funeral with full military honors for Palmer will be held at 3 p.m. Sunday at St. John’s United Methodist Church in Seaford.
Marine Lance Cpl. Richard Z. James, 20, also of Seaford, died Saturday. He was shot in the head in an exchange of gunfire with insurgents near Ramadi and died after being transferred to a nearby medical facility.
Snowberger initially went to Iraq on Nov. 5 and returned to his field artillery unit in late April after his leave. It was while on leave that he got his first glimpse of the family’s new home in Lexington, N.C. His parents had moved there about two years ago, not long after he’d enlisted in the Army.
“He’d never seen it before,” his mother said. “I’m glad he got the chance to and I’m glad we got that last chance to see him.” |
