Things were going well. After moving to a new school, senior Jackson Slaybaugh had found his place. Being part of the Bands of Wando allowed him to find both community and purpose.
In the back of Slaybaugh’s mind, however, was something out of the ordinary. A dedicated firefighter, his father was forced to retire due to his heart disease, and was living with many complications. But, despite these challenges, his father remained resilient.
“Between the ages of 30 to 33, he had 11 heart attacks and two strokes,” Slaybaugh said. “He died three times on the operating table while they were doing open heart surgeries, so it’s amazing how he’s lived that long. So I’m surprised he could still walk, he had arthritis in both legs so I am honestly surprised he made it that far.”
His father was resilient, but in June of 2024, everything began to change.
“He went back to the hospital [and] he had to get another stint in, which is something that opens up your arteries and veins and this was his seventh stint, so he was already in bad condition already. He was very negligent on his heart meds and just all of his meds in general, so that kind of got the best of him,” Slaybaugh said.
Slaybaugh got the news from his mother in the dark of a summer night.
“My mom burst in through the door at like 1 a.m. in scrubs. She was rushing home from work at Roper Saint Francis [Hospital] so she had rushed in and then she told me that my dad died,” Slaybaugh said. “It’s such a weird feeling, you think when you get that news, it’s like, you don’t know what to think at first, so I still can’t explain it… My grandparents came down from Georgetown and we went through everything [and] we had to discuss what’s gonna happen next.”
The loss of a parent remains a wound for long periods of time. At the age of 17, Slaybaugh found it difficult to move on. His usual interests briefly faded as he coped with his loss.
“It was very mentally exhausting… It’s such a weird and unique experience to go through [and] I feel like no one should ever go through at this age,” Slaybaugh said. “Music kind of stopped for me. I was originally going to be in marching band, but I quit because I just didn’t want to have too much stress on me… Everything kind of just, literally everything, got put on hold.”
As the school year began, Slaybaugh inched closer and closer to becoming a legal adult. In order to memorialize his dad in a permanent way, he had an idea.
“I turned 18 [in] December. So as I got closer I was like ‘I think I want to get something to dedicate to him… The [tattoo] is just something I found online and I just really like the look of it,” Slaybaugh said. “Since he was a firefighter, I got a little fire patch. It shows his dates, his initials, since he was an engineer, he’s the one that drove the truck. I got a little wrench. Then I got a station number and then a little axe. He wrote a will and testament to me and [‘Love, dad’] were the last words on that will and testament.”
The intricate design took Slaybaugh several weeks of preparation. But it was worth it. After showing his design to the tattoo artist, Slaybaugh got inked.
“He said he really liked the idea and he also said, when he was finished, that he really liked the axe that he did, [because] it shows the wood, so it’s really cool [and] he put so much detail into it,” Slaybaugh said.
In the months surrounding Slaybaugh’s addition of a permanent memorial to his father, he gained the strength to get back into the thing he loves: music. Bands of Wando director Andrew Blair was able to help Slaybaugh
cope with this familiar loss.
“My dad passed in 2018, so, at [the] very least, when this happened for him, I felt like that I had at least a perspective that I could bring to him to sort of, you know, help him down the road, ‘cause it’s been really hard for him. But just having somebody that has been there, it’s not just saying sorry, but saying ‘yeah it sucks right now, it will get better,’ I think that that’s been a good thing for us,” Blair said.
Blair has been able to see Slaybaugh thrive even in the wake of his father’s passing.
“He is an outstanding performer, but he’s also a very, very talented composer, arranger, [and] producer. He’s going to have a really wonderful career,” Blair said.
