Interlachen High School 2006 graduate Katelin Stoll (left) and IHS teacher Liz Middleton stand together in front of a memorial for Stoll's fellow 2006 graduate U.S. Marine Cpl. Jesse Stites, who was killed with five other Marines when his helicopter crashed Jan. 19 in Afghanistan's Helmand province.
Katelin Stoll and Jesse Stites were inseparable in high school.
Stoll wiped away tears Thursday as Stites -- a 23-year-old corporal and squadron crew chief in the U.S. Marine Corps killed Jan. 19 -- was memorialized at the Interlachen High School's ROTC building.
"We were attached at the hip for two years and I don't ever remember an argument," Stoll said of she and her fellow 2006 IHS graduate.
IHS junior and ROTC member Jamie McMall and local resident Samuel A. Smith played taps after a rifle salute to the fallen Stites, who was not there to answer "present" for roll call from the steps of the ROTC building.
Stites will have a statue placed inside the structure near the only other person honored there -- Robert H. Jenkins Jr. -- the local Vietnam Marine who died after leaping on a live grenade to save his fellow soldiers in 1969.
Martha Stites, who is married to Cpl. Stites uncle, hugged IHS HOSA Supervisor Lee Smith at the memorial.
"He was just wonderful," Mrs. Stites said of her fallen nephew. "He loved everybody and everybody loved him."
Smith's daughter Glory Smith heads Monday to serve the Marines in Afghanistan. She was a high school friend of Cpl. Stites.
"She took it like a Marine, but she was upset," said Glory's father Wes Smith.
Liz Middleton, who taught Stites at IHS, remembered him as a polite, mature student whose one discipline referral she instantly knew was a mistake -- and went to the teacher to have him realize the error.
Middleton said Stites is often the graduate she asks her current students to model.
"He was interested in learning everything he could learn about the world," she said. "So I can see how that would naturally lead him to a military career."
Near Cpl. Stites' photo Thursday sat another image, that of Daniel Severino, whose brother, IHS freshman Dillon Severino, is in the school's ROTC program.
"He's only got two months to go," Dillon said of his older brother serving overseas. "He'll be back."
Middleton told ROTC members standing at attention "once you come to this school, you are ours forever."
She said the IHS family never stops cheering for graduates to realize their dreams.
"I think Jesse did," she said. "I just wish it could have been a whole lot longer."
A photo displayed Thursday of IHS graduate and Marine Cpl. Jesse Stites, who was killed in action Jan. 19 in Afghanistan.
IHS educator Lee Smith (left) hugs Martha Stites, whose nephew Marine Cpl. Jesse Stites was killed last month in combat.
Austin Heyser, Interlachen High School's ROTC Command Sergeant Major, embraces Mary Kay Engelking, the mother of a Gulf War veteran attending Thursday's memorial held by the high school for Jesse Stites, the 2006 IHS graduate and Marine corporal killed in action Jan. 19.
