KILLINGLY, Conn. (AP) – Nearly 300 people celebrated Army Spc. Christopher Lee Hoskins’ life Saturday, filling the Killingly High School auditorium with song, poetry, prayer, laughter and applause.

Hoskins’ father and sisters were among more than a dozen people who spoke about the 21-year-old killed June 21 in Ramadi, Iraq, when his unit came under small arms fire.

Other speakers included U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., U.S. Rep. Robert Simmons, R-Conn., Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and Comptroller Nancy Wyman.

Hoskins became the 27th serviceman or civilian with Connecticut ties to die in Iraq or Afghanistan since March 2002.

Last Tuesday, Army Maj. Steve Reich, a Washington, Conn., native, became the 28th, killed with 15 others on a U.S. helicopter shot down in Afghanistan.

“Christopher would be at once embarrassed by the remarks of today, and swollen with pride inside,” his father, Richard, an English teacher at the high school, told the audience in a speech of more than 10 minutes. The service lasted two hours.

His voice breaking at times, Richard Hoskins told of his son’s childhood, his relationships with his sisters and younger brother, his struggle with Tourette’s Syndrome, and his embracing of his Army brethren as his second family.

The remembrances, he said, were “things to let you know he didn’t become a hero by his death; he was always becoming a hero by his life.”

John Fulco, who had the 2001 graduate as a student in two English classes, said he and Richard Hoskins telephoned each other regularly about snow days and board of education meeting topics.

Shortly before 6 a.m. on June 21, he recalled, his home phone rang. He answered with, “Good morning, sunshine, and how are you today?” expecting his colleague. “And I heard a man’s tears on the other end of the phone. And all he could say was, John, it’s Chris.”‘

Dodd said Hoskins answered a call in enlisting in the Army in 2003 and in recently signing up for another four-year tour.

“We will not forget this young man,” Dodd said. “… We will keep this young man in our hearts and our minds.”

“Please know that the service and sacrifice that Christopher has offered in the cause of freedom and democracy is a noble undertaking for which we all are grateful,” Simmons, a Vietnam War veteran, told the family.

Blumenthal quoted Robert Frost’s “The Gift Outright” in his eulogy, including its line, “Our gift to our nation is the gift of war.”

“God must love so, because he takes our best,” he said, “and Chris Hoskins was one of our best.”