Approximately 300 relatives, friends and service members gathered Tuesday at the East Brunswick Jewish Center to commemorate solider who died Feb. 3 near Iskandariyah, Iraq,
By Sharlee Joy DiMenichi
On the day he married his college sweetheart, 1st Lt. Seth Dvorin received an angel pendant from a Vietnam veteran who was a stranger to him.
The veteran was dining last August in the same Watertown, N.Y., restaurant in which Lt. Dvorin, a 1998 South Brunswick High School graduate, and his bride, Kelly Harris Dvorin, were sharing a post-wedding meal with their families. The veteran offered the young military man the pendant because, he said, it had kept him safe through the war.
"We’re here today because the pendant didn’t work. Seth is being buried with the pendant in his pocket," said Lt. Dvorin’s father-in-law, the Rev. Michael O’Brien.
The Rev. O’Brien addressed the approximately 300 relatives, friends and service members who gathered Tuesday at the East Brunswick Jewish Center to commemorate 1st Lt. Dvorin, 24, who died Feb. 3 near Iskandariyah, Iraq, when a roadside bomb exploded as he tried to defuse it, according to his mother, Sue Niederer. Lt. Dvorin was assigned to the 10th Mountain Division, Battery B, 3rd Battalion, 62nd Air Defense Artillery Regiment, based at Fort Drum, N.Y.
Lt. Dvorin was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star and promoted from second to first lieutenant. Ms. Niederer said Lt. Dvorin had given his life for his men, who he warned away from the improvised bomb he had spotted along a road.
"He saved, from what I am told, 18 lives," Ms. Niederer said.
Members of the 10th Mountain Division, in olive green dress uniforms, stood at attention as mourners entered wearing yarmulkes and black mesh hair ornaments. Sobs broke the silence as the soldiers bore the flag-draped coffin from the sanctuary at the end of the service. The Rev. O’Brien compared Seth to the biblical figure Aaron, who interceded to protect his people from divine wrath.
"Seth stood between death and life because that’s what he was trained to do, but that’s also who Seth was," the Rev. O’Brien said.
Being who he was meant practicing compassion and bravery for Lt. Dvorin, friends and relatives said. Lt. Dvorin appears to have long believed that a life of integrity requires courage.
"I don’t think many of us really know who we are, and most of us are afraid to find out. We’re afraid because we might find out something about ourselves we really didn’t want to know," read Seth’s senior quote in the 1998 South Brunswick High School yearbook.
Lt. Dvorin’s last act of self-sacrifice was consistent with the kindness that marked his character, friends and relatives said.
Deployment followed his wedding by less than a week, but Lt. Dvorin’s phone calls from Iraq were not about the dangers of war or concern for his own needs. Instead, they were questions about how his new wife was faring in his absence, Harris Dvorin wrote in a statement the Rev. O’Brien read.
Lt. Dvorin’s sister, Rebekah Dvorin, shared a similar view of her brother’s concern for others.
"My brother is a brave hero who would never step down from any mission he was asked to conduct," Ms. Dvorin said.
Lt. Dvorin’s generosity inspired others, friends and family said.
"He taught me how to truly love someone with all that you are," Ms. Harris Dvorin, 25, wrote.
The love Lt. Dvorin and his wife shared was in his heart when he died, the Rev. Dvorin said.
"There’s nothing magic about a pendant. There’s magic in Seth’s love for Kelly," the Rev. O’Brien said.
Eric Nili, Lt. Dvorin’s best friend, said a loving nature such as Lt. Dvorin’s had the potential to conquer many of the causes of suffering in the world.
"If more people had a fraction of his good will, there would be no poverty, no hunger, certainly no war," Mr. Nili said.