July Fourth more than a day to have a party
Their names are never far from mind here, where reams of columns have been written over the years regarding veterans and the price so many have paid for the freedom we’ll cele- brate today with cookouts, parades and a concert on the Esplanade.
It’s the Fourth of July, which means party time for most of us, though not for Alex Arredondo or Puzzy Carter, two of our own for whom the party ended before their lives really began.
Alex was 20, barely out of Blue Hills Regional Technical School in Canton when he enlisted in the Marines in 2002. He would perish when shot by a sniper while on a reconnaissance mission in Iraq, but on a ship bound for that miserable battlefield he would write the following to his family:
“I’ve never seen water this blue before. I’ve never looked 360 degrees around me and seen nothing but water.
“It seems like my whole life changed in an instant. Yesterday I was in a classroom, learning about trigonometry. Now I’m being sent across the world to fight. Soon I will be in the desert in full combat gear, ready to carry out my mission, proud to be fighting for my country.”
Carter, also a Marine, lost his life a generation earlier after joining the Corps upon graduating from Hyde Park High School. He was 19 when he died, 47 days after arriving in Vietnam, killed by a rocket-propelled grenade as he provided cover for fellow Marines from a perch on the Troi River bridge.
Thirty years later, classmates and friends who always remembered him with affection, decided to formally memorialize him, chipping in for a granite marker which they placed at Moynihan Park by the corner of Truman Highway and Wakefield Avenue where they all grew up together playing basketball, tag football and kitty whist.
But it’s the inscription they put on that stone that still resonates here because of the way it captures the price young Americans like Alex and Puzzy have always paid.
“He never had a chance to go to a high school reunion, get married, coach Little League or get gray hair,” it notes. “We never had the chance to throw a surprise 40th birthdy party for him.
“What a wonderful friend he was to all of us. In our hearts he has stayed young, handsome, funny, brave, full of life and we still miss him deeply.”
It was their way of saying Semper Fi!
But to those who’ll take notice of that stone and those who’ll only read about it here, it’s also a poignant reminder that this glorious Fourth is a gift to us from brave young men like Puzzy and Alex who’ll be at today’s festivities, if only in spirit.
So we pause this morning to remember and thank them.