Family and friends remember Matthew Serio, who always wanted to be a Marine, as a big-hearted but already battle-hardened 21-year-old.

04:43 PM EDT on Wednesday, April 7, 2004

BY NEIL SHEA
Journal Staff Writer

Journal photo / Connie Grosch Matthew Serio's mother, Sharon, joins with his friends, from left, Michael Detora, Jackie Ornazian and Lauren Dettore last night.

NORTH PROVIDENCE -- Anthony Serio cradled the thick plaque close to his chest and nodded as friends streamed into his home, their eyes red and wet.

He turned the plaque in his arms, rubbed the caramel-colored wood with his thumbs, and glanced down at the picture it held of his son, the Marine, wearing his white cap and dress blues.

Lance Cpl. Matthew K. Serio, 21, was killed near Fallujah, Iraq on Monday after his unit, the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, 3rd Platoon, Charlie Company, arrived to help quell an uprising in the seething city west of Baghdad.

Anthony Serio wasn't home yesterday morning when Marine Corps officials drove to his blue-shuttered house at the end of Steer Avenue carrying the news military mothers and fathers hope never to hear. The men reached him at work, in Worcester.

"They said something about shrapnel," he remembers. "I don't really know."

For the moment, last night, Serio didn't care about the details.

He was busy listening to the crowd packed into his front room, buzzing with tales about Matt. Friends and family packed into the house, clutching flowers and bags of food. Neighbors, schoolmates, parents -- the small house seemed to swell, and the walls echoed laughter.

"I like talking about him," Serio said. "I like listening. Just hearing what he means to everyone is great."

Matthew was the middle of three sons. His older brother A.J., 23, is in the Navy, serving aboard the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. His younger brother, Chris, 19, is a freshman at Franklin Pierce College in Rindge, N.H.

The pack of friends talking near the doorway of the Serio's home last night remembered him as a fun-loving guy who could eat macaroni and cheese by the bucketful and who took weekly trips into Providence to eat hot dogs at Spike's on Thayer Street.

At North Providence High School, Serio was a lineman on the football team. Head coach Michael Coletti remembered him as a courageous, big-hearted player who toughed his way through injuries without complaint. He also played on the golf team his senior year, something a friend talked him into doing.

Lance Cpl. Matthew K. Serio

"He always knew where we were going," she said. "He took care of us. He was such a nice guy. He'd tell you all the time how he loved you."

Serio joined the Marines immediately after graduating from North Providence High School in 2001.

Some of his friends said they tried to talk him out of it. But they couldn't.

Becoming a Marine was what he had always wanted to do.

Even his mom, Sharon, couldn't keep him from the dangerous job. She didn't try very hard, she said, because she knew it was his dream.

After boot camp, he was ordered to Camp Pendleton, Calif. As a recruit, he watched the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11. Friends said it bolstered his sense of duty and pride.

Serio's unit was one of the first into Iraq at the start of the war, his family said.

Photos he sent home show him standing with his company atop the ruins of one of Saddam Hussein's Baghdad palaces last April.

The men's faces are stained by wind, sun and sand. Serio's forehead, shielded by his helmet during the race into the Iraqi capital, shows as bright white patches in a dun-colored world.

SERIO RETURNED to North Providence a few times after President Bush declared an end to major fighting last May. His last trip home was around Thanksgiving, his father said.

Justin Lucas, 20, one of Matthew's closest friends, stood in the Serios' home last night, laughing his way through stories. He said his friend had found his calling and matured during the rough routine of military life.

"He was a party-animal football player when he left," Lucas said. "He came back a soldier."

The maturity Serio gained in the military seemed to put many people at ease. When he came home from a world his friends could scarcely imagine, Matthew had a way of making things seem okay.

Journal photo / Connie Grosch Sharon Serio, center, mother of U.S. Marine Corps Lance Corporal Matthew Serio enjoys seeing old photos of her son. The Serio's home was crowded with friends and family bringing food, flowers, and photos.

"He made you feel comfortable with it," Lucas said. "Some soldiers say, 'I don't like this, I want out,' but Matt wasn't like that."

He told funny stories about combat, ruined cities and life as a soldier. He brought Iraqi cigarettes home as gifts.

They made everyone gag, his friends all said, laughing.

But while Serio was a grown-up soldier, he was still a very young man. His parents said he didn't have clear plans for the future. He spoke vaguely about wanting to be a police officer. He had recently broken up with his girlfriend, Meghan Morin, because the distance -- and the burden of battle -- was too great.

In his last e-mail home, Matthew asked for homemade cookies and chewing tobacco. The guys are running out, he told his mom.

"That's what he was like," Sharon Serio said. "Always looking out for his friends."

As the crowd in his home began to subside, Anthony Serio sat on the faded couch in the TV room beside his mother, Mary, a bouquet of yellow tulips before them on a small table.

Anthony Serio said he'd had his ups and downs today. He was up now, after listening to the memories. He smiled wearily as his mother remembered the fussy Matthew, the one who always needed his clothes pressed neatly before he left the house.

Then the phone rang. It was A.J. Serio, the Navy man, calling from somewhere across the world. Anthony Serio stood up and tucked the phone underneath his chin. His smile disappeared as he began to explain.

TODAY, the Defense Department confirmed Serio's death, in a typically-terse release, saying only that it came from "injuries received from hostile fire in Al Anbar Province, Iraq."