Elizabeth Loncki remembered

NEW CASTLE -- An electric candle still glows in each window of the Loncki home in the Bayview Manor neighborhood outside New Castle, and evergreen garlands are hanging by the door.

Multi-colored strands from the ornament-festooned living room tree reflect on the faces of the family gathered around the kitchen table, but they are no longer celebrating a holiday.

They are facing life without 23-year-old Elizabeth, a senior airman who was killed Sunday in a bomb blast near Baghdad. Food and flowers fill the kitchen sideboard; the phone and doorbell constantly ring. Covering the table are documents for planning a funeral and writing an obituary.

Three photos are at the center of the table. A graduation tassel hangs from the largest, of Elizabeth as a smiling high school senior in fancy dress.

She wears camouflage from head to toe in the second, sharing the frame with a billowing American flag. In the third frameless photo, Elizabeth is pictured early in her enlistment in the Air Force, wearing her dress uniform and accompanied by a sign with her flight and infantry squad number.

"She hates that picture," her father, Stephen Loncki, says, pointing to the photo. "Look at those eyes and smile. She was scared to death, all by herself, and look."

Driven by a competitive spirit, her family says Elizabeth wasn’t afraid to be on her own, to try something new or to set high standards for herself.

She was a 5-foot-5 dynamo who would do 51 "real" push-ups to her father’s 50, draw a crowd of male spotters impressed by her strength at the gym and, after achieving a high score on the entry test for the Air Force, choose to become one of the few women working as a bomb disposal technicians.

"She said, ‘That’s what I want to do’ and that’s what she did," grandfather Walter "Pop" Loncki said. "There was no stopping Elizabeth."

She is the first Delaware woman to be killed in the line of duty in Iraq and the 66th female American soldier killed there. To her family, however, "she’s just ours," aunt Tina Masiello says.

"This hole is huge, it’s huge," Masiello says. "Our souls have a huge void."

In a family that included any number of aunts, uncles, grandchildren and cousins,
Elizabeth "always had an audience," Masiello, said. Like generations of relatives, she attended St. Peter the Apostle grade school. She played volleyball, basketball and softball there and was honored as one of her class’ most valuable athletes.

By the time she graduated from Padua Academy in 2001, the little girl who once proclaimed "Barbies are my life" had grown into a woman who enjoyed going to the gym once or twice a day and who never picked a subject or major to focus on because "she wanted to experience everything," Masiello said.

Elizabeth spent one semester at Arizona State University, but decided to join the military once she realized her life plans didn’t include a desk job. After enlisting, she chose to become a literal "blonde bombshell," a tow-headed member of the explosives disposal team who proudly told inquiring strangers that her "bomb squad" hoodie was real.

"She didn’t want to be just anything; she wanted to be something," Masiello says. "She wanted to do something not everyone else can achieve."

While pointing out the photos of Elizabeth at all stages of her life that covered the family’s dining room table, Walter Loncki said the granddaughter he helped raise once said "if she saved one life, it was worth it." An Air Force official told the Lonckis that each day her team went out, Elizabeth probably saved thousands.

She didn’t cry, she was tough, but she was tender, Stephen Loncki said. His daughter told him that every mission the bomb disposal team handled in Iraq involved "blowing something up." Each time, Elizabeth made sure she had a key role, that she was "the go-to girl," Masiello said.

The last time the family spoke to Elizabeth was at Christmastime, her first away from home. Among her gifts from Stephen Loncki was a pen that delivers an electric shock to users; Elizabeth used it on her commander.

"She was probably the only one who could get away with it," Masiello says.

"Because of that smile," Stephen Loncki says. "Behind that smile she was probably the toughest one in the squad ... she didn’t just get by on her looks. She was like ‘I’m as smart as you. If you want to do some push-ups, let’s go.’"

Only two weeks remained until Elizabeth was scheduled to return home from Iraq, where she’d been stationed since August. The Lonckis were still waiting Tuesday evening to finalize burial plans and to hear the full details of her death.

The Air Force has told them she was killed after her explosive ordinance disposal team was targeted by a car bomber. At least two others, airmen Timothy Weiner and Daniel Miller, also died.

She and boyfriend Sgt. Jayson Johnson, who had planned to ask Stephen Loncki’s permission to marry her this week, recently bought a house near Hill Air Force Base in Utah, where they were stationed. The family was planning to fly out to help Elizabeth decorate and add a wood-burning fireplace.

Elizabeth volunteered to go to Iraq before being called, her father said, and her plans once included a lifetime career in the Air Force. But near the end Elizabeth "didn’t know if she was doing the good she thought she was at the beginning because ‘if people don’t want us to help, what do we do?’" Stephen Loncki says.

"She said to me, ‘Nan, they don’t want us over there," grandmother Christine Loncki says.

The Lonckis call Elizabeth a hero and they’re proud of her. But they’re angry about reports that President Bush today will announce plans to send more troops to Iraq.

"All these kids who serve our country pay the most terrible price," Stephen Loncki says.

"For ‘our freedom’ they say they’re sending 20,000 troops. They don’t say they’re sending ‘Elizabeth Loncki’ your daughter, they don’t say Timothy Weiner or Daniel Miller or the 3,000 other people dealing with the same stuff we are."

From the Journal

Related Link:
Elizabeth A. Loncki dies of injuries from I.E.D.