Friends and family remember South Portland’s Jason Swiger as someone who wouldn’t let his six years of military service change who he was.
“No matter what, Jay was Jay,” his sister Becka Swiger said on Monday.
Swiger, 24, a sergeant with the 82nd Airborne Division, who was on his third tour of duty in Iraq, was killed Sunday. According to Swiger’s sister Angelica Cole, her brother was killed when he and three other soldiers got out of a Humvee to hand out candy to Iraqi children.
“That’s the type of guy he was,” Cole said.
Swiger’s mother Valorie Swiger said that her son wanted to be in the military ever since his childhood when he would visit his uncle’s house in Pennsylvania where he could sit on the porch and see paratroopers jumping out of planes. His uncle had served in the 82nd Airborne Division, and Swiger decided that he would too.
Swiger is the second soldier from South Portland to die in Iraq this month. Pfc. Angel Rosa, 21, was killed in combat on March 13.
South Portland High School Principal Jeanne Crocker said on Monday that Swiger was “a leader in his peer group” who “served as a mentor” to his friends.
Valorie Swiger said she plans on placing yellow ribbons throughout South Portland to honor her son and all of the other troops serving in Iraq. This is not the first time Swiger has hung ribbons supporting the troops in the city.
In 2003, she was involved in a battle with the South Portland City Council after she hung yellow ribbons all over the city of South Portland. The council eventually forced Swiger to remove the ribbons.
On Tuesday, Swiger said, with the help of friends and family, she planned to hang ribbons all throughout the city once again. Central Maine Power has given Swiger permission to hang the ribbons from the company’s utility poles.
Valorie Swiger said that she would continue to support the troops in Iraq in honor of her son. “He told us, ‘When there’s no support out there for us, morale goes down, and when morale goes down, soldiers die,'” she said, “We need to support them until the last one comes home.”
For more on this story, see the March 27 issue of the Current.
Second South Portland soldier killed in Iraq
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