House honors fallen soldier; funeral arrangements set

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February 8, 2010

By RONNIE ELLIS The Daily Independent Mon Feb 08, 2010, 07:32 PM EST

FRANKFORT — Funeral arrangements have been set for a Lawrence County soldier who was killed in Pakistan last week.

Also, the Kentucky House of Representatives stood in silence for a few moments Monday afternoon, adjourning in memory of Matthew Sluss-Tiller, who died Wednesday from an improvised explosive device while on a civil affairs mission at a girls’ school in northwestern Pakistan.

Sluss-Tiller, 35, was one of three U.S. soldiers killed in the bomb blast.

Visitation for Sluss-Tiller starts at 4 p.m. Friday at the Burnaugh Baptist Church. The funeral is set for 11 a.m. Saturday at the church.

Majority Leader Rocky Adkins, D-Sandy Hook, whose House district includes Lawrence County, said he told Sluss-Tiller’s wife, Melissa, and his mother, Jane Blankenship, that the legislature “holds him in the highest respect possible” during phone calls to Fort Bragg, N.C., where Sluss-Tiller was stationed.

Adkins sponsored Monday’s resolution honoring the 1993 Lawrence County High graduate.

Sluss-Tiller was part of a small unit that trains Pakistani troops in counter-intelligence, Adkins said. Their deaths were the first known U.S. military deaths in the border tribal regions near the Afghanistan border. Three girls also died in the explosion and Adkins said as many as 70 others were injured.

Sluss-Tiller left behind a 3-year old daughter, Hannah, as well as his mother and wife, also a Lawrence County High graduate.

After Adkins’ emotional description of his conversations with Sluss-Tiller’s widow and mother, the House clerk read a resolution in his honor and then the full House and the audience in the gallery stood in silence. It ended with an “Amen” from House Speaker Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg.

Brenda Thornbury, an art teacher at Lawrence County High School, said Sluss-Tiller was one of her students in high school, and that the two remained friends even after he graduated.

She said Sluss-Tiller would always stop by her classroom to visit whenever he came to the school to see his mother, a special-needs teacher who has since retired.

On Thursday, Thornbury recalled Sluss-Tiller as a “wonderful, well-mannered and respectful” young man who expressed a desire to be in the military all throughout high school.

“He was always eager to do whatever he needed to do to serve his country,” she said.

Sluss-Tiller also was deeply religious and had a strong faith in God, she said.

Thornbury said she hadn’t spoken to Sluss-Tiller since his mother retired several years ago and moved to North Carolina to be closer to her son and his family.

Melissa Sluss-Tiller works as a counselor at the base.

MANAGING EDTIOR MARK MAYNARD contributed to this report.

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