Soldier's body returns home

MISSION - The hearse made the same trip down memory lane that Alex Gonzalez might have made himself had he returned from Iraq alive.

Followed by a slow procession of vans carrying his parents, sisters, uncles, aunts and cousins, the 21-year-old's flag-draped casket passed Marcell Elementary School, K. White Junior High and finally Mission High School, where Gonzalez graduated in 2005 after playing defensive end for the Eagles.

It stopped at his family's Barbara Avenue home, off South Inspiration Road, where his 13-year-old mutt, Lucky, barked at the black vehicle carrying his master.

"He (Gonzalez) was just making that last stop," said Gonzalez's uncle and godfather, Jorge Rodriguez. "His last trip home."

Gonzalez was killed May 6 by a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq. The U.S. Army specialist was on his first tour of duty there. Gonzalez had been promoted to the rank of specialist in January, his uncle Armando Rodriguez said. Family members unaware of the promotion initially reported him as a private first class.

Last month, he was injured in Iraq and spent two weeks in the hospital with a hairline fracture on one of his ribs and an injury to a leg, Armando Rodriguez said. The young soldier was awarded the Purple Heart after that incident.

On Tuesday morning, following the grenade attack that took his life, his body was flown into McAllen-Miller International Airport on a private charter plane before making its roundabout way to Virgil Wilson Funeral Home on Conway Avenue.

Mission residents stood along Conway, clutching flags whipped by the breeze, and patiently waited to pay their respects.

Mage Trujillo, owner of the popular Mission nightspot Pepe's on the River, stood under a tree with a fellow Vietnam veteran. The soldiers coming home these days are too young, Trujillo said.

"You see their photographs and you say, ‘My God, this one's just a child,'" he said. "But in essence they're grown men. They've grown up in the school of battle."

Nilda Anes stood at the airport with a sign that read, "We love you."

"I didn't know him, but I'm part of Mothers of Military Servicemen and he was one of my boys," she said. Her son, Sgt. Mario Anes, is a U.S. Marine currently deployed in Iraq.

Gonzalez is set to be buried at 2 p.m. Saturday at Rio Grande Valley State Veterans Cemetery, 2520 S. Inspiration Road, Mission, after a noon funeral Mass at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church, 620 N. Dunlap Ave., Mission.

"It's just hard to believe he's gone," Jorge Rodriguez said. "He was tremendous."