May peace be inside all of us,
Cindy
By Mike Clary / South Florida Sun-Sentinel
As the nation today celebrates an independence won on the battlefield more than two centuries ago, few will be more conscious of the toll a war can exact than South Florida families who have suffered losses in Iraq.
Ryan Sorensen and Alex Arredondo were U.S. Marines. Both were shot and killed while on dangerous patrols to rout insurgents. And both left grieving families who have reacted in different ways to the deaths that now shape their lives.
Rebecca and James Sorensen planned to spend the Fourth of July with friends in North Carolina, where they will honor their son by raising the Stars and Stripes on Beech Mountain. Another flag waves outside their home in Boca Raton, and a third is folded into a triangular wooden case on the mantle inside.
Carlos Arredondo, who made national news when he set fire to the van of the Marines who came to his Hollywood home to inform him his son was dead, also has a folded flag. But the flag he will show today is the one draped over an empty casket that he plans to haul down a street in a Needham, Mass., patriotic parade and then take to a fireworks display at Boston's Esplanade.
"The red of the flag is our red now," said Melida Arredondo, a reference to the blood her stepson shed.
Lance Cpl. Alexander Arredondo, 20, was with the 1st Marine Division when he was shot by a sniper Aug. 25, 2004, outside the Iraqi city of Najaf.
Hours after he was slain, three Marines pulled up to the Hollywood house the Arredondos had bought just three months earlier. So distraught was Carlos Arredondo on hearing that his son was dead that he battered the Marines' van with a hammer, and then splashed gasoline on the inside of the vehicle and lit a blowtorch he had grabbed from the garage.
The van was destroyed, and Arredondo was burned over 26 percent of his body. After Alex's death, the Arredondos moved back to Boston to be close to their son's grave and Alex's brother Brian, 19. The couple have also become active in the peace movement.
Lance Cpl. Ryan Sorensen, 26, a graduate of Boca Raton High School, worked as a mechanic at the Firestone Tire & Service Center. While he loved tinkering with the 1992 Chevrolet Camaro that still sits in front of his parents' home, he longed for something more and enlisted in 2004. On Nov. 6, 2005, on patrol with the 6th Marines in Husayba, he busted through a door of a house and was shot.
When their son died, the Sorensens were with relatives in Washington, D.C., where James Sorensen was recovering from heart surgery. They received the news of their son's death in a telephone call from a member of the Marines' notification team standing in their driveway beside Ryan's car.
"It was," said James Sorensen, "like getting hit in the face with a 2-by-4."
In recent separate conversations, Carlos and Melida Arredondo and James and Rebecca Sorensen talked about their sons, among 2,530 American servicemen and women to die in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.
Carlos Arredondo, 45, was born in Costa Rica, and came to the United States as a teenager. He has worked as a bus driver, landscaper and handyman but has struggled since his son was killed. Melida, 40, his wife of more than nine years, has a master's degree from Florida International University and is a supervisor in a community health center.
Carlos: "Mentally, emotionally, it is hard because I am constantly reminded of what happened. And I have been going to funerals of others killed, meeting families, speaking through a group we started, People United for Peace. I know I have PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] from this."
Melida: "Our relationship with each other has been impacted. Due to his injuries, he couldn't work, got laid off, so we moved back north, and I went back to work before I was ready. I was still grieving, too.
"Since Alex was killed, we have learned so much about how much we didn't know. Mistakes in the war, the way recruiters target low-income Hispanics. I am not against recruiting, but I'm for truth in recruiting. And Alex was very trusting that he would be just fine."
Carlos: "I have a casket, a real casket, with my son's photo on it. When I am feeling down, I just go out and show people my son's casket, and his boots. I walk for miles sometimes, all over the city. There is no political writing. It is just to honor my son and the other fallen heroes. People salute, ask if there is someone inside the casket. I get a lot of respect from veterans. Do we feel that troops should come home now? Not if it means a lot more Iraqis being killed. But do we wish that the war had never happened, yeah. Alex would be alive. Of course I'm anti-war."
Melida: "But not anti-military."
Carlos: "I don't blame the kid who killed my son because he is another kid. I wish I could meet his mother. I know he is dead, too, and we don't even know him. I blame George W. Bush and his administration for starting a war when we shouldn't be there right now. It wasn't necessary. I feel the loss when I think that I won't see him grow up, won't go to his wedding, see my grandchildren. We miss him. These are the parts that make you sad. I am going to change my name to Alexander Brian, to honor my sons. And I am working to become an American citizen, to further honor my son."
James Sorensen, 59, a consulting engineer, met his wife, Rebecca, in the 1970s in Zion, Ill., when he worked at a radio station and she was a college student. Married 35 years, they have a daughter and a grandchild born 10 days after Ryan was killed. Rebecca, 55, is an assistant principal at Hagen Road Elementary School west of Boynton Beach.
James: "Ryan was very angry about 9-11, and he felt he could do something about it. He was offended by behavior that wasn't right. And he also wanted to test himself, as young men do. And the Marines were the best, so he went there."
Rebecca: "When he came home that day and said he had enlisted, I asked him, `Why are you doing this now? Do you know what's going on in the world?' He said, `I always wanted to be in the Marines. Don't worry, I'll be fine. I'll be trained.' I always thought he'd go into engineering, maybe not stick with cars. But I didn't think he'd be in the military. He kept a lot to himself."
James: "Sad, oh, yeah, sad beyond measure. Of course, we're tormented. But we are not lost, pathetic people. We don't feel we were cheated by the government. People ask me about the war, if he needed better training. No, he was in that situation because he picked up an ax, kicked down a door and somebody shot him. That's the kind of guy he was. He was always looking for a higher tree to fall out of. But he was not a thrill seeker. He would have been first through the door because he thought he was the best guy to do it.
"Ryan believed strongly in what he was doing. He was impressed that people [in Iraq] were willing to stand in line to vote. In some ways I am delighted with what he was able to accomplish. That's the pride part."
Rebecca: "He was looking forward to going. It was an adventure. He never talked about dying. I just prayed a lot that he'd come home. But it was a fear I had, that he wouldn't come home alive. I never said that to him.
"I keep with me his last letter. He said he knew he could die, but he wasn't afraid. He said not to be devastated, to be proud of him. He was doing exactly what he wanted."
James: "I don't want to open the door of finding blame. We tend to try to take this apart, and then assign blame. It's media driven. But blame? The person to blame is the person who shot him. Not the president, the Congress who funded the war. Blame the terrorists and insurgents; they are the ones doing this."
Posts
