Associated Press
March 16, 2004

MALDEN, Ill. - Nancy Hollinsaid points to her favorite photograph of her son. Lincoln Hollinsaid is wearing his Army uniform somewhere in Iraq. Even his teeth are covered in sand.

Rosemarie Dietz Slavenas pulls out a photograph of her son. When people think of him, this is the one she wants them to remember. Brian Slavenas is in uniform, too. That of a Little Leaguer.

The two mothers share an obvious pride in their sons. They also share the pain of losing them in Iraq - Army Staff Sgt. Hollinsaid in a battle at Saddam Hussein Airport in Baghdad, Army 1st Lt. Slavenas when his helicopter was shot down near Fallujah.

But in a war that has claimed the lives of more than 550 soldiers, the choice of photographs suggest the two mothers are also different sides of the same coin: Hollinsaid keeping alive the memory of a soldier's life, and Slavenas the memory of a life before soldiering.

"I turned my grief into glory," Hollinsaid says. "It was the only thing I could do. I wasn't going to get through it any other way."

Says Slavenas: "I'm not going to let it die. Because letting it die means letting him die."

Save her mother, Hollin said had never lost anyone before. She didn't know what to do, how to react. She didn't want anyone to come to her house. She didn't want to talk to anyone, particularly the small army of reporters and cameras outside her door in the 380-resident Illinois town of Malden.

"I just wanted it all to go away," she says.

Ultimately, she decided she didn't want it to go away. Maybe it was the man who showed up and placed in her front yard a cross with her son's photograph on it. Or maybe it was her approaching birthday in early May. Hollinsaid isn't sure why she and her husband got the idea to turn their home into a tribute to their son.

"It was almost like a birthday present from Linc," she says.

Outside, the Hollinsaids transformed their yard into what Hollinsaid calls "Linc's Glory Garden." Next to the cross they put a flag pole that had been donated to them. This spring a plaque with a poem called "Soldier" will be added and they will plant an oak tree in the yard on April 7, the anniversary of their son's death. They will place a stone with the words of a poem by Robert Frost, her son's favorite poet, near the tree.

Inside, they've turned their house into a sea of red, white and blue, with everything from patriotic-themed ribbons and place mats to the "United We Stand, Together We Remember" pin that Hollinsaid wears.

A spare bedroom now looks like a small museum, with her son's Purple Heart and Bronze Star, an urn containing his ashes, two letters of condolence from President Bush, and Lincoln's watch, still ticking, still on Iraq time.

"I come in here every day," she says. And when she does, she touches a tile imprinted with a photograph of her son.

As always she has embraced the military that her son loved. Last Christmas, she and her husband traveled to Lincoln's base in Georgia to have dinner with his captain.

Hollinsaid says she is comforted by knowing her son believed in what he was doing.

"He was over there to free the oppressed people, to give them he same rights we've got," she says. "He said that. He wanted them to have the right to have to stand in line at a movie theater and complain about the line, that's what he said."

Hollinsaid couldn't imagine enduring her son's death if she didn't believe in the war. "I don't see how you can live through that," she says.

Rosemarie Dietz Slavenas, 80 miles away in Rockford, has done it by remaining who she was before her son's death.

That was clear from the beginning. A peace activist since the early 1990s who protested the war in Iraq before her son was deployed, the 60-year-old Slavenas wasn't about to let his military service overwhelm his funeral.

Against the wishes of her ex-husband, a veteran, Slavenas refused to allow an honor guard, 21-gun salute, flag-draped casket or any other military traditions. In their place were friends with stories about the kid on the bike, the musician and the athlete.

She heard the criticism, but the way she sees it, her son chose her as his primary next of kin who would have the last say about his funeral because of her beliefs, not despite them.

"He would know what I would do," she says.

Slavenas has paid for her stance. In December, a group of civic organizations and area businesses held a tribute to her son and other local heroes. She says she wasn't invited and learned about the event after it happened.

"All I could do was write the person who coordinated this event and say thank you for honoring my son," she said of what she sees as a snub because of her political beliefs.

Slavenas feels others' disapproval even in condolence letters, which sometimes include the advice that she should "just" be proud of her son. What's not said but what Slavenas sees is the suggestion that maybe she should not voice her thoughts about the war, including the day of her son's funeral when she blamed Bush for her son's death.

"The key word is 'just'," she says.

Slavenas doesn't care. She is determined to remind people that her son was killed. When she opens her wallet, there looking out is Brian.

"I say 'This is my son, he was killed Nov. 2 in Iraq.' Why should I suffer alone... Why should I not tell people," she says.

Slavenas knows that kind of thing makes others uncomfortable, but she refuses to stop.

"People say life goes on. It doesn't for me. I can't live with this. This was a homicide."

The way Slavenas sees it, she's no different than the mother whose son was shot dead on the street. "Nobody would expect somebody whose child is a victim of homicide to say, oh well, life goes on," she says.

As the anniversary of the war approaches, what is clear are not just the differences but the similarities between the mothers.

Both try to fill their days. "You kind of fall back and let your obligations kind of move you along," says Slavenas, who has continued her anti-war activities, including a peace protest in nearby DeKalb she plans to attend to mark the first anniversary of the war.

"It's better than sitting around moping," Hollinsaid says of her own activities.

They come at it from different directions, but the two also share something else: a lack of anger. Hollinsaid says she has never been angry at her son's willingness to lay down his life, and Slavenas says she is letting go of her own anger for her own survival.

While Hollinsaid has so many of her son's things on display, Slavenas keeps her son's last message to her - a birthday greeting - on her answering machine.

And both consider their sons heroes - Lincoln Hollinsaid during the airport battle and Brian Slavenas in helping to land a crippled helicopter so that more people lived than died.

"This is my way of honoring Brian, instead of letting it die," Slavenas says.

"It's to honor Linc," Hollinsaid says in the room that house her son's mementos. "It's all about that."

Copyright 2004 Associated Press.

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