‘Patriots’ started with search for relative’s story
It took Dave Gutierrez five years to complete “Patriots From the Barrio.”
The journey was long and worth it.
Gutierrez set out to write the biography of World War II veteran — and relative — Ramon Gutierrez from Del Rio, Texas.
Through research, he discovered that Ramon Gutierrez had served in Company E in the 141st Infantry 36th Division.
The original National Guard unit out of El Paso was composed entirely of Mexican Americans from the barrios of El Paso.
In January 1942 other Mexican Americans from south Texas barrios would join the unit.
The 36th Division was deployed to North Africa in the spring of 1943 and they spearheaded the allied landing at Salerno, Italy, becoming the
first American unit to oppose Hitler’s Nazi forces on the European continent.
The company fought in some of the most horrific battles of the Italian Campaign.
Ramon Gutierrez would be captured on two different occasions during the war and escaped back across Allied lines both times. He would also become one of only a few Americans to be decorated for valor on the battlefield by the Soviet Union during World War II.
“I always thought his story was fascinating and I was wondering why his story wasn’t out there,” Gutierrez says. “His heroics in World War II; the rest of the world didn’t know about it. I kept stumbling on newspaper articles about him. When I began writing, there were eight survivors at the time. Now there’s none.”
The book was self-published in 2014. Gutierrez will speak at the National Hispanic Cultural Center on Saturday, Nov. 17.
By late 2017, the rights for the book were optioned by Wilmer Valderrama, who has appeared on “That 70’s Show” and “NCIS.”
Westholme Publishing has picked up the book and the new edition of “Patriots From the Barrio” was released in May.
“It’s been an amazing journey with this book,” he says. “I had never heard this story be told and that’s the reason I wanted to tell it. I connected with over 60 different families through the research. I connected to the families and they each had their own individual story. Again this goes back to the barrios of Texas. It’s where family is formed.”