Jaron Holliday remembered by friends

Friends of Jaron Holliday are coming to grips with the death of the 21-year-old soldier. Holliday was killed Saturday in Iraq when a roadside bomb hit the vehicle he was riding in. The News On 6’s Steve Berg reports whenever the country is at war, it's the younger generation that takes the brunt of the casualties, and that's the situation once again.

It's a lot to ponder for college senior Alec Atchison.

"It's kind of surreal right now. You know it's happened, but it's kind of numbing because it doesn't really sink in,” Atchison said.

Atchison says he and Holliday first became friends at church in Owasso.

"He's real talkative, and I'm real talkative, so it wasn't real hard for us to get along at all,” he said.

He got the news of Holliday’s death in an e-mail over the weekend. And ever since he says, snippets of memories of mission trips with the church have been popping into his mind, a conversation here or a practical joke there.

He says he last got to see Holliday for about 30 minutes when Holliday was home for Christmas. He says they didn't talk about the war.

“Being guys, you don't really think that much about the danger and stuff,” Atchison said. “We were just talking about life as normal and when he was going to be back and what we were going to do together, and so it kind of hits you hard to a certain extent, because you just assume he going to be alright."

Atchison says Holliday’s favorite hobbies were basketball and playing the piano and says Holliday had the talent to be a concert-level musician, but he says the example he set as the oldest of eight children is what mattered most.

"I'm sure the biggest way he'd want to be remembered, first and foremost as far as the type of person he was, is how much he cared about his family and loved his family. He was really great with his little brothers and sister,” Atchison said.

Atchison say Holliday was motivated by the terrorist attack on 9/11 when they were 15. He remembers him saying then that, "if I was old enough to serve, I would."

From KOTV 6

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Jaron Holliday remembered by family

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Jaron D. Holliday dies 'when the vehicle he was in struck an IED during combat operations'