Memorial Day parade honors ‘forever heroes’

ARLINGTON — Adan and Yolanda Gonzales didn’t want their boy to join the Marines. They told him no.

He listened — at least for a few years. Finally, Adan Jr. enlisted at 24.

The younger Gonzales flourished in the Marine Corps. He joined an elite sniper-scout unit and was promoted to sergeant. He served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He was a warrior who cared very deeply for the villagers living near his unit’s outpost, his parents said.

In a letter from April 2011, he asked his grandmother to pray for the Afghani children. “They share the dangers of bullets flying around them as we as Marines do. Our gun bursts wake them up at night, and I can hear them crying after firefights.”

Four months later in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, Gonzales became one of more than 1,000,000 Americans who have died in military service.

On Monday, his parents were among the crowds lining Olympic Avenue in Arlington for the city’s Memorial Day parade. They wore T-shirts with their son’s picture on it and the words “Forever our hero.”

“It’s touching to see that people are recognizing our fallen, and they’re not forgotten,” Adan Gonzales said.

The parade kicked off under gray skies Monday morning. Some spectators waved flags from the crowded sidewalks as American Legion members and Boy Scouts marched by. Some were somber and wiped a tear or two from their eyes. Others laughed and cheered.

The Arlington High School marching band gave the parade a beat. They stopped beside the city’s Legion Park, and played the National Anthem.

The whole thing was over quickly. Most paradegoers dispersed. A handful lingered at the park, home to the city’s war memorial.

The Gonzaleses headed home, holding a fluttering American flag.

“I didn’t want him to go (to war), but I respected his decision,” Adan Gonzales said.

They raised their son and daughter in Bakersfield, California. Last year, they moved to Arlington for health reasons and because they have family in the area.

Yolanda Gonzales said her son found himself in the Marine Corps, and that he joined because he believed in fighting for freedom.

Forget the politics about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, his father said, Adan Jr. was willing to die for the “American spirit.”

“He loved our country’s diversity and freedoms,” he said.

His son wanted to bring that overseas, he said. Before he left for Afghanistan, he studied the Pashtun language spoken by many Afghanis, and their culture.

Adan Jr.’s concern for Afghanistan’s children, no doubt, was inspired by his three young children — two girls and a boy, who was 12 months old when his father died.

Yolanda and Adan Gonzales have a scrapbook of photographs, newspaper clippings and other keepsakes from their son’s death. At the back is a child’s drawing on a scrap of lined yellow paper. Adan Jr.’s oldest daughter drew it a couple weeks before he died. She was 7 at the time.

There are two tables piled with items. They’re carefully labeled: sandwiches, chips, crackers, drinks, presents, cards. There are three figures. The largest figure is by a door. It’s labeled “daddy.” The other two — a boy and girl — are under a banner that reads “Welcome Home.”

Herald photographer Ian Terry contributed to this report. Dan Catchpole: 425-339-3454; dcatchpole@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @dcatchpole.