E.C. celebrates soldier
EVANS CITY — A Forward Township native and U.S. Army specialist who recently returned from the Middle East got a surprise Wednesday night when family, friends and members of the Evans City Volunteer Fire Department celebrated his homecoming in patriotic fashion.
Spc. Tom Matoka, 24, and his wife, Haley, have lived in Fort Stewart, Ga., since he enlisted in 2013. The pair got married shortly after graduating from high school, and Matoka enlisted soon afterward.
It was a decision that would take him away from the fire company he joined as a teenager, and take both him and his wife away from the community they had lived in their entire lives.
On Wednesday, Matoka's homecoming didn't go unnoticed. In fact, members of the fire company had been planning a surprise for Matoka for a while. They sent out invitations to participate in a motorcycle escort, and fired up the station's newest fire engine to serve as his ride into town.
Matoka's friends at the department said they organized the celebration to honor probably the company's first active member to leave on a military deployment. The department has one member, Jimmy Natali, in basic training, and another member, Rick Wilbert, who is a reservist in the U.S. military.
Matoka, who fellow firefighters say always had a way of saying what he thought and making people laugh at the same time, remains on the department's roster as an “on leave” firefighter because of his military service.
“He definitely has his comical side,” said Matt Otto, the fire company's president. “He can make everyone in the room crack a smile.”
Matoka joined the fire company in 2010, when he was still a minor, along with his close friend, Jack Scholl, who remains an active lineman with the department.
Scholl, who helped organize the homecoming with company Lt. Mike Schoeffel, said it made his day to see Matoka surprised with a motorcycle escort and a ride back to Evans City in the company's new fire apparatus, Engine 20.
“We went through some hard times in our lives together,” Scholl said. “It was awesome seeing him happy. He was smiling ear to ear the whole time.”Schoeffel, who is the vice president of the Zelienople Legion Riders, a group that provides motorcycle escorts to military service members going to and returning from deployments, said planning the event started a week or two ago, and attracted riders from around the region, as well as from about 10 fire stations.The result was dozens of motorcycles and riders who surprised Matoka at a meeting point on Interstate 79 and took him through Zelienople and then to the Evans City Fire Hall for a brief reception.Matoka, who deployed in October to Kuwait and then traveled to Baghdad, Iraq, with the Army's 24th Ordinance Company, returned from his deployment on July 6, much to the delight of his wife, Haley, and their two dogs, a lab mix and a husky.She called his homecoming emotional and exciting.“I'm very grateful for his service and very proud of him,” she said.Another person excited to see Matoka was his father, Robert, who spent 35 years as a reservist in the Navy, Air Force and National Guard. He wasn't surprised by his son's decision to join the military, and was looking forward to being reunited with him for the first time since his deployment.“It's a great feeling,” he said, “that he made it home alive.”
