Philadelphia Weekly

Celeste Zappala remembers the screaming. On a dreary April evening in 2004, it sliced through the air over the sound of the rain.

oud enough to bring her neighbor running, the screaming continued, but the sergeant on her porch remained motionless, staring at the sodden ground.

"In my head I was thinking, 'It's so quiet. It's so quiet. Why is someone screaming?'"

Zappala's neighbor picked her up from the porch and carried her inside, where she was told the news she already knew. She'd heard on a noon newscast that very day that a soldier had died in Iraq that morning in a factory explosion. She'd heard it again on the radio at 6:30, driving home to Mt. Airy from her office downtown.

"I heard it, and I thought, 'Well, I know it takes eight hours to be notified, and that time has passed.' Then I felt bad because I realized if it wasn't us, it was someone else."

But it wasn't someone else. Sherwood Baker, Zappala's 30-year-old foster son, deployed to Iraq only six weeks earlier, had been killed while guarding a factory that was being searched for weapons of mass destruction. The factory exploded, and Sgt. Baker was killed when he was struck in the head by debris. He lived-his family was told-for two hours after being evacuated to a nearby field hospital.

She knew he was dead before she heard the soldier say it at her own kitchen table. She knew even before he spoke his first words on the porch: "Are you Sherwood's mother?"

The dog had been barking, and she'd seen a dim figure standing at her front door. She could see the military uniform, the notebook in his hand, but thought maybe someone had come to speak to her about the election that was being held the following day. She briefly thought he might be a salesman.

Then she saw his medals. "I opened the door and stepped out on the porch, and then it came to me what was going on. And I started screaming."

The sergeant who stood on Celeste Zappala's Mt. Airy front porch didn't stay more than 15 minutes. But it was enough time for her best friend Lynne to get there from down the block, and for Al, her ex-husband and Sherwood's foster father, who'd already received the news, to arrive from South Philly.

"I kept saying, 'What am I supposed to do? I don't know what to do.'"

It didn't take long for Zappala to answer her own question. She wasn't going to wait for another phone call or knock at the door, and she wasn't going to bury her eldest son in silence.

"I decided right away. I decided immediately. One of my friends called me and said, 'It's so horrible. It's so horrible.' And I said, 'You know, I'm going to talk about it. I'm not going to be quiet about it.'"

She traveled to Wilkes-Barre, where Sherwood had lived with his wife Debbie and their 9-year-old son J.D. She and her family spent the first day there, grieving and deciding what to do. By Wednesday they were in Philadelphia, and she'd already agreed to speak about her son with TV reporters. Soon after that there were articles in the Daily News and the Inquirer. Their story was all over the news.

"It was just a very intense period of time-people visiting and reporters coming, clergy coming, our friends. There were people there from 6 in the morning till 2 a.m. I have no idea how many people came to our house. There were so many cards and flowers. Eventually I tried to respond to at least the flowers. I could never respond to all the cards."

Baker was buried near his home in Wilkes-Barre on May 4, 2004. A memorial service was held in Germantown the following day at the First United Methodist Church where Baker was baptized. Though it was the worst of times, Zappala says she found tremendous comfort in her church, where a candlelight vigil was held for her son on Aug. 17, 2005.

But the news stories and outpouring of sympathy and support, though massive and comforting, were not enough. She needed answers.

Since age 18, Zappala, now 58, has been involved in peace and justice issues. She protested the Vietnam War as well as the wars in Central America, and was an advocate for nuclear disarmament. A Temple grad, class of '70, with a degree in social work, she's long been familiar with ways to influence government policy and stimulate social change.