Aaron Shoemaker was charismatic, energetic, athletic, a leader among snowboarders at Kissing Bridge and at Plattsburgh State, and not a little mischievous. He lived for the moment and was always testing the limits of his abilities.

He died testing those limits, suffering fatal injuries in mid-May in a snowboarding accident in Tonale, Italy. He was taking part in a demo with Nitro, his pro team. He went off a jump he had built for himself, lost control and landed the wrong way. He was taken by helicopter to a hospital and died 12 hours later. One family member said the impact of the fall may have stopped his heart but that the exact cause of death was unknown.

"He died doing something he loved. There's not a right or wrong way to go," said Chris Naugle, the owner of Phatman snowboard shops and a KB regular.

"He loved to fly," said Colin Shoemaker, at 16 the youngest member of this snowboarding family from East Aurora. "He was all about the wind."

Taking the lead

Aaron Shoemaker loved to try new things and to get others to come along for the ride. This trait got him into more than a little trouble at times but he levened his mischief with enough laughter that the retelling of his worst stunts could elicit a chuckle from even his grieving mother.

One of his worst ideas was deciding to pull a fire alarm on the last day of eighth grade so he could leave it with a bang. He asked childhood friend Steven Sororka to stand lookout. Sororka admitted he wasn't as "ballsy" as Aaron and bailed out. Aaron got caught.

"I drove by the school that day and, seeing all the kids on the lawn, laughed that someone pulled an alarm," Melanie Shoemaker said. "Then when I got home and there was a message to call the principal, I was cursing Aaron under my breath."

"Aaron always got you pumped to do stuff," 21-year-old Brendan Munson said. "Maybe it wasn't the smartest stuff, like when he was teaching me to do backflips. He could always do these things beforeanyone else. I think the first five times I tried I landed on my neck."

His daring could be genetic. His grandfather, Curley Shoemaker, did a flip off the "slide of life," a pulley on a wire that drops passengers into the family's backyard pond, on his 75th birthday. A couple of weeks ago, the octogenarian was parasailing in Florida.

"I'll take half the credit," Curley said when asked if he passed on the love of flight to Aaron.

"The whole family snowboards, we know the risks," said his mother, a long-time instructor at Ski Tamarack. She and her husband, Kim, took to snowboarding before Aaron.

"If I wanted to keep the Shoemaker name I had to ride," said only sister Leah, who recently became the third Shoemaker sibling to graduate from Plattsburgh State.

Friends came easily

Stories of Aaron's stunts brought smiles to mourning faces at a reception in Emery Park following Aaron's funeral, but it was his human side that brought them there.

Some traveled great distances. Sororka, the fire alarm co-conspirator, flew in from Los Angeles, where he is working in movie production. Brendan Munson came in from Vermont, where he is an intern at Burton Snowboards.

"He'd make friends in the grocery store line," Leah said. "People looked up to him. He had a face that always smiled. It was contagious. People felt better around him."

He made friends by the chair-full at Kissing Bridge, where teen-age boys - the group is overwhelmingly male, with a few notable exceptions - build lasting friendships that cross school district lines. Some, like Colin, ride daily.

"A lot of us met through boarding," said Mark Palz, of Depew, who got to know Aaron 10 years ago. "It seems good people gravitate to it. KB is the hub, where it started.

"The group keeps getting larger and larger. It's the people as much as the snowboarding."

The boys push and challenge each other; risks are taken to earn the approving smiles of peers. Competition is used to make everyone better rather than to determine a winner. The gifted become role models to be emulated.

"If you'd see (Aaron and his friends) in the lift line you'd cut people in line to ride up with them and they were always cool about it," said Matt Piasecki.

Part of the family

Snowboarders even followed Aaron to his house, making the Shoemaker place a second home.

"They are all my boys," Melanie said of the KB regulars. "Some of them would crash at our house. It smelled like a locker room."

"Shoemaker's was like a halfway house," explained Aaron's buddy Yon Chmielowiec of East Aurora.

As a way of giving thanks, a friend of Aaron's had some photos of him spirited out of the house. She transferred the images to cloth and in three days made a memory quilt as a surprise gift for Melanie.

"Everybody knew who Aaron was because he was a (United States of America Snowboard Association) junior national champion in snowboarding," said Orchard Park's Jake Braun. "Everyone looked up to him because he was such a good rider.

"In the snowboarding culture you get respect from your peers. You use others - and what they can do - for motivation. Aaron was a good motivator.

"Aaron got me to do things I would never do," Braun added. "One day at (Plattsburgh State) he came into my room and was really excited about going skydiving. Nobody else could have gotten me so pumped up to do that. I went with him and it was awesome. I never would have had the nerve to do that on my own.

"He made me better at snowboarding, at everything. (Aaron) was better than so many kids but he took the time to ride with everyone."

Smile sold Italians

Aaron Shoemaker went to Italy because he thought being cultured was important and he wanted to learn a second language. But mostly, he went to be with Erica, who had come to East Aurora High School from Italy as an exchange student and had been his girlfriend for seven years.

There, his smile and talent - and the Winnie the Pooh suit Aaron would occasionally wear on the slopes - earned him the affection of the Italian snowboarding team and a pro contract.

Jesse Shoemaker, at 25 the oldest of the four siblings, arrived in Italy just five days before his brother's death. He has taught snowboarding alternately in El Colorado, Chile and in Stratton, Vt., for the last two years.

They spent four days together, then Jesse and two American friends went to Aaron's apartment in Padova while Aaron worked the last day of the demo at the Tonale resort.

"I was walking around town that Sunday when an Italian friend called and said Aaron was hurt and I had to call Erica," Jesse said. "I didn't know then how badly he was hurt. We met her family and went to the hospital."

Soon after, Jesse was bringing his brother back home for the last time. Even in death, Aaron is still motivating others.

"This won't change anything," said Naugle, the Phatman's owner who is still a regular competitor. "We all crash. Everybody falls and gets hurt."

"We'll speed it up," Colin said. "It will be a reason to ride harder. I was always trying to get better than him. We had a friendly competition and he loved it when I got good."

Ryan Lilley, who met Aaron on the KB slopes seven years ago, said Aaron's death reminded him of their shared passion.

"I only snowboarded a few times last winter - now it's all I want to do," he said.

e-mail: fdoyle@buffnews.com