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GREENSBORO - Head into Greensboro, and you'll see the billboard beside U.S. 421, right before the trio of fast-food restaurants and the spiderweb of overpass concrete.

Go fast or get distracted, and you'll miss it. But slow down and look right, and you'll see the Bible verse, the whimsical smile, the nickname in quotes.

Elio Charcon Anderson Jr., EO for short. He's the big bear of a brother, the benevolent protector of his two younger siblings and his friends from his neighborhood, Greenfield Homes.

The billboard went up Thursday afternoon, and it'll stay there for a while to remind everyone who passes about EO and his ultimate sacrifice for doing the right thing.

EO was 22. He was killed a month ago Sunday. He was stabbed in the back, within sight of his house, for protecting someone he knew - a 25-year-old woman assaulted by someone who broke into the house where she was baby-sitting a 5-year-old boy.

Today, a teenager sits in jail in connection with the crime, and a single mother goes for grief counseling every weekday morning to deal with the heartache of losing her oldest son, her oldest child.

Taron Manuel, EO's mom, has her good days and bad days. Still, every time she walks toward her home, she'll look left and see it - the spot where her son was killed.

A gravel driveway just down the hill.

"I'll tell you, if I could afford it, I'd run a wooden fence from one side to the other so I couldn't see it," says Manuel, a 41-year-old mother of three who works as a 411 customer service representative. "Looking at that every day is hard. It keeps it fresh."

But the billboard helps. So will a candlelight vigil Sunday night at Greenfield Park, the small playground just down the street.

City Councilwoman T. Dianne Bellamy-Small approached Fairway Advertising about the billboard. She also approached Manuel about the candlelight vigil and GTCC about awarding EO his GED.

EO, who dropped out his senior year at Dudley High, was going to GTCC so he could pass his high school equivalency exam. He wanted to be a truck driver.

Bellamy-Small was one of EO's teachers at GTCC. And EO was one of her son's friends. So, it's personal for her. It's personal for EO's neighborhood, too.

Greenfield Homes sits in southeast Greensboro, at the bottom of Willow Road, near the manicured campus of Mount Zion Baptist Church, one of Greensboro's most historically active African American churches.

It's been the roots of many working-class families for decades. Go through the neighborhood, and front doors are open, waves are frequent and neighbors are known by nicknames such as Prince and Junior, Skinny and Booty Gator.

And EO.

EO lived with his mom and his grandparents in a small, three-bedroom house. His mother grew up there. So did he. EO knew everybody in the neighborhood. And everybody knew him.

"It hit us like a ton of bricks," said Darlene McGriff, 49, former neighborhood president. "I got the call around midnight, and I just broke down crying. It's like losing a family member. We all watched EO grow up. And now, his life. Taken instantly."

It was Aug. 21, a Thursday, about 9:30 p.m. Taron Manuel was away from home. Dorothy Manuel, EO's grandmother, was at home, watching TV in bed, barely awake. She heard a banging at her front door. That's how she got the news.

"EO's been stabbed!"

She ran down the hill, barefooted, in her pajamas. She saw EO on his left side, the back of his shirt soaked with blood. Nearby, she saw a 25-year-old baby sitter named Vanessa Johnson. Dorothy Manuel screamed.

"What happened?" she yelled.

"He was only trying to help me!" Johnson said.

Manuel grabbed a towel and put pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding. A 67-year-old woman. Trying to save a 22-year-old man. Her grandson, her big boy who loved dinosaurs, her big man who loved cooking.

EO - 6-foot-1, 280 pounds - was fading fast.

"It looked like he was looking at me, and his eyes said, 'Grandma, help me!' but there was nothing I could do," Dorothy Manuel said from her living room recently.

That's all she could get out before she broke down. Her neighborhood, where she had lived for four decades, had lost two of their own: EO and Scotty Lamont Brice Jr., the 18-year-old charged in the crime.

Brice's grandfather plays golf with EO's grandfather. Brice's father knows EO's father. And Brice's grandparents know EO's mother - so much so his grandmother saw Taron Manuel at the nail salon, hugged her and said over and over, "I'm so sorry!"

After the funeral, Taron Manuel delivered a handwritten thank-you note to Elaine and Alan Thompson, Brice's grandparents. Elaine had dropped by the house and offered her condolences. Alan couldn't.

He couldn't face Skinny, Taron's dad, his golfing partner.

"We're going to make it,'' Manuel told him. "We're going to make it together."

It seems they will, with the help of a billboard and a candlelight vigil. That'll keep alive the memory of EO and his act of altruism among his friends, his family, his neighborhood and his city.

For Taron Manuel, that brings her some peace.

Her son didn't die in vain.

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com