| Submit your comments on this article | |
| Home Front: WoT | |
| NYT creates new Medal: Purple Star | |
| 2006-05-13 | |
| At Our Lady of Sorrows Roman Catholic Church in Corona, Queens, Mary, the mother of God, weeps at the feet of her son in the mural over the altar. Yesterday, Maria, the mother of Sgt. Jose Gomez of the United States Army, wept from her seat in the first pew. May God grant you solace in the pain of your loss, Ms Gomez. "You, more than anyone, understand the pain of the mother of Christ," the Rev. Thomas Healy said in Spanish to Maria Gomez, whose slender shoulders slumped into the Army officer seated to her right as her husband, Felix Jimenez, wrapped an arm around her. "We are all with you in your pain." Look at the picture, and you'll see a Sergeant First Class. But she was really alone and she seemed to know it, weeping and staring blankly at her son's coffin in the center aisle. She had brought him to the United States from the Dominican Republic when he was 3. Twenty years later, on April 20, he was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq, during a second tour of duty there. His death came 31 months after his fiancée, Analaura Esparza-Gutierrez, 21, an Army private from Houston, was also killed by a roadside bombing in Tikrit, Iraq. Three springs ago, Sergeant Gomez had proposed to her. Now both were gone. Yesterday, church and state rose up, each in its ritualistic glory, to honor the brief life and sudden death of Sergeant Gomez. Father Healy tenderly anointed his coffin with incense, and gave the young man his final blessings. The ladies of Corona — some in veils — filled the pews. Army officers flanked the right side of the church, and a two-star general presented Mrs. Gomez with the purple star and bronze star that President Bush had authorized her son to receive. Doesn't someone who has made the ultimate sacrifice deserve decent editing, even from the New York Times? How low can they go?
| |
| Posted by:Nimble Spemble |