This site honors some of our Fallen Soldiers. It is if course impossible to honor them all, and as an individual, I can honor only a few.
Though I am not officially a member of the U.S. Army, I have become a volunteer part of it, as well as all our other military
services.
And, as is the case with any soldier, you don’t get to pick your missions. They are picked for you.
My orders are relayed to me by the New York Times. Each time I read a report of the death of one of our soldiers I have to decide if I should start a site to honor their memory.
I picked up Section B, The Metro Section, of the New York Times, just over an hour ago. On the top of the page — “above the fold” in newspaper jargon — I saw for the first time a picture of Pvt. Issac T. Cortez. On seeing a photograph of him, placed on the ground next to a tombstone, and seeing flowers placed nearby, I instantly knew he was one of our latest Fallen Soldiers.
I then turned over the page so I could read the text on the bottom, below the fold.
I didn’t read all of it. I didn’t have too. For as soon as I saw he was a member of the legendary Tenth Mountain, I knew that I would be starting a site to honor his memory, as well as that of the Colangelo Family, and the Tenth Mountain Division.
I was crying within the next ten minutes, and am crying as I write this.
Writing these sites is not fun. I do it because I feel I must. I think the military calls it, “Duty, Honor, Country.”
I now know as a certainty that it is only a matter of days until the day will come when I will think of his name at least once each day after that day, as has become the case with SSgt. Chay and Lt. Murphy
However, this mission differs from most missions in that it must not be done immediately. In the words of the British Royal Navy, “Time and tide wait for no man.” But on a mission one such as this one can wait, for Pvt. Isaac T Cortez is no longer with us.
However, you do need to let people know you have received your marching orders, so that Pvt. Cortez’s fellow soldiers, family, and friends, will know they are not alone in mourning his death.
Here is the full text of the article, From the Bronx to Iraq to a Return Home, Too Soon:
From the Bronx to Iraq to a Return Home, Too Soon
By JIM DWYER
All afternoon, leaning into the wind, they trudged down Castle Hill Avenue in the Bronx, dressed in funeral parlor clothes. A car rolled up, and an older woman slowly unfolded from the front passenger seat, bracing her fingertips against the door frame, then pulling herself out deliberately, waving off a hand extended from the sidewalk. A young woman carried an infant seat out of a minivan. Soldiers from an Army honor guard, perfectly creased and practiced at their duties, had been among the first to arrive.
The remains of Pvt. Isaac T. Cortes, 26, a member of the 10th Mountain Division who died in a bombing last week in Iraq, were back in the Bronx yesterday for a wake at the Castle Hill Funeral Home. This morning, he will be buried after a Mass at St. Raymond’s Catholic Church. So far, at least 59 men and women from New York City have died in Iraq.
Private Cortes grew up in Parkchester, one of the sprawling apartment developments built by Metropolitan Life in the 1930s and ’40s, and attended Christopher Columbus High School.
Reina Rivera, 20, a cousin, said Isaac made return visits special after her family had moved from the city to Milwaukee.
“When we came back, even though he was older, he stood over at Grandma’s house with us and played cards,” she said. “He roughhoused my little brothers.”
After graduating, he got work as a ride operator at Playland Amusement Park in Rye, one in a series of jobs. “Like every ordinary young man, he was looking for things to do,” said Irma Cruz, his maternal grandmother.
The family helped. “I brought him to the head of caddies at Scarsdale Golf Club, and he worked there a while,” said Steve Toro, an uncle. “He seemed to be fine with it.”
Private Cortes’s mother, Emily Toro, who lives in Queens, has worked as a party promoter and now helps care for her grandchildren. His father, Isais Cortes, is on the maintenance staff at Parkchester. His brother, Chris, younger by one year, has two children.
Several years ago, Isaac Cortes met a young woman who had a child. “He helped raise her up,” said Wanda Toro, an aunt. “To him, she was no different than if she was his own daughter.”
Last year, he found work closer to home. “He got himself on as a security guard at Yankee Stadium,” said Uncle Steve.
Asked about his salary at the stadium, his grandmother laughed. “He really enjoyed the games,” Ms. Cruz said.
Even so, he had hopes that were larger than a string of seasonal jobs, said Donna Vasquez, a friend. “We spoke about this, that he wanted to be a police officer or go into the military,” Ms. Vasquez said. “He wanted to be a person of respect and dignity, to not have a street life. He never had any problems like that.”
Around the end of the baseball season last year, he enlisted in the Army and went to Fort Benning, Ga., for basic training.
“My mom sat us down and told us, and we all got panicked,” Cousin Reina said. “I spoke to him — no questions, no ifs, no buts.”
Back home this summer, his next move was clear: He would be one of the 30,000 additional soldiers that the Bush administration was sending to Iraq in hopes of quelling the violence. First, though, he visited his grandmother in the Soundview section of the Bronx.
“I didn’t want him to go,” she said. “I didn’t try to tell him not to. He went to make a better life. And to defend his country.”
He left in August. “He said it was the best decision he ever made,” Aunt Wanda said. “He spoke to his mother on Thanksgiving Day. He said it was really crazy, that he was very tired.”
Five days later , Private Cortes and Specialist Benjamin Garrison, 25, of Houston, were driving through the village of Amerli, 100 miles north of Baghdad. In July, one of the deadliest bombings of the war had killed between 150 and 155 people there.
A roadside bomb killed Private Cortes and Specialist Garrison.
“Three and a half months he was there,” Aunt Wanda said.
A few blocks away, on Metropolitan Oval in Parkchester, a crew of workers were putting the final touches on the holiday decorations and sound system. The Cortes family apartment overlooks the oval. Every year of his life, from the time he believed in flying reindeer to the days when he fell full-face in love, Isaac Cortes had seen those decorations and heard that music.
Now, in the middle of the oval, near the giant wooden toy castles and the vinyl Santa Claus dolls bobbing and shuddering in the wind, was a memorial wreath above a portrait of Pvt. Isaac T. Cortes: son, brother, grandson and more.
