A close-knit community is mourning the loss of a young man who people say had a future as bright as his smile.

“He was loved by everybody,” said Yolonda Jamison, cousin to Antonio Jamison, a Eutawville resident who died after a car crash early Wednesday. “He was never too old to play with the little ones. He spent time with everyone.”

He was known as Tony to his friends. He had hopes and dreams, his family says. He had an eye on a business career but had just this past weekend decided to enter the U.S. Air Force, following a family tradition of military service.

But those dreams ended Wednesday around 7:50 a.m. when the car which Tony and several other Lake Marion High School Gators were riding in left the road and overturned.

Along with his classmates, Tony was taken to the Regional Medical Center. A ninth-grader remains in critical condition while others received non-life threatening injuries, officials said.

Tony, who celebrated his 18th birthday in August, did not recover.

“I was just stunned and numb,” Yolonda Jamison said, remembering the call from her mother telling her the news about Tony. “It took me a little while to come down. I made myself busy and took that time to be strong for my family.”

In Santee, word of the tragedy reached Lake Marion High School where Tony was a senior on schedule to finish in December.

Tony’s automotive mechanics classmates were simply shocked that the class motivator, as Kendall Jamison called him, could be gone.

“He was always smiling, showing his teeth,” he said, smiling at the recollection.

“He could make you smile every time,” said Adam Gibbs. “He was friends with everybody.”

Automotive mechanics instructor David Dees said Tony was the class cutup but not so much that it was disruptive.

“He was just a ‘make people happy’ kind of guy,” Dees said.

Lake Marion Principal Rose Pelzer-Brower said this is the first time the student body has had to say goodbye to a member of the Gator family since the school opened four years ago.

“The kids are doing OK, they’ve done pretty well,” Pelzer-Brower said. “The student body is very tightknit. So when something happens to one, we all feel it.”

The Orangeburg County Sheriff’s Office sent their Victim’s Advocate team to the school to help the students cope.

The automotive class created a poster telling their friend goodbye. Several other posters were placed throughout the school, giving the student body of 1,000 a way express their grief and share their feelings of loss.

While the messages were being written to Tony, S.C. Highway Patrol officials were investigating the crash site less than 10 miles away on Hwy. 210 near Vance. On Thursday, they had no further information as to what caused the vehicle to leave a straight stretch of the road and overturn.

Back at the Jamison residence, Tony’s father, Robert, sat gazing out a window, a distant look in his eyes, remembering the middle of his three sons.

“He loved basketball,” Robert Jamison said, still looking out the window. “He loved to smile.”

Jamison said his son enjoyed watching pro football on TV as well -- Dallas, Miami, the New York Giants, in particular.

Tony and his father spent time together watching evening softball games in the community.

When Tony was a little boy, he watched the games while Robert played. As Tony grew older, however, the two switched.

On Saturday, Robert Jamison has to watch as his son is buried.

The family had initially planned on a service in church, and there’s been no shortage of volunteers for the funeral. But with the overwhelming number of mourners, friends and classmates, the service is now scheduled to be held at “The Swamp,” the LMHS basketball gymnasium, at 1 p.m. Saturday.

“You know you love your loved ones,” Yolonda Jamison said. “But when you see how much he meant to friends ... we have to move it to a bigger place.”

Although his friends and family will say goodbye this weekend, they carry with them a trove of memories, some common, some unique.

But there’s one memory of a young man tragically taken that stands out among all the rest.

“His smile,” Yolonda Jamison said. “That was him.”

T&D Staff Writer Richard Walker can be reached by e-mail at rwalker@timesanddemocrat.com or by telephone at 803-533-5516.

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