Giving thanks to those we should never forget
You’ve read about them here before, yet they come to mind again.
As we prepare to celebrate another Fourth of July, there’s something about their absence from the frivolity of family and friends that underscores the price that they and millions like them paid for the cookouts and parades we’re about to enjoy.
Oh, they’re still here in spirit. But you can’t hug a spirit. And you certainly can’t tell a spirit “Thanks!” for what it did to become a spirit. All you can do is remember, so this morning we remember Puzzy Carter and Alex Arredondo, two of our own.
Puzzy’s pals in Hyde Park made sure passers-by would remember when they placed a granite marker in Moynihan Park, their old hangout, bearing his name and calculating all he had given up to be of service to his country.
Joining the Marines upon graduation from Hyde Park High, Puzzy was on his 44th day in Vietnam, stationed at the north end of the Troi River, trying to spot the enemy, firing tracers from an M-16, securing Highway 1 so that his buddies on the perimeter could advance.
Moments later he was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade. He was 19.
On that marker his friends noted: “He never had the chance to go to a high school reunion, get married, coach Little League or get gray hair. We never had the chance to throw a surprise 40th birthday 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.”
Arredondo, who graduated from Blue Hills Regional Technical School in Canton, also went directly to the Corps and was 20 when he was killed conducting a house-tohouse search in Iraq in 2004.
His father, Carlos, the good Samaritan in the cowboy hat the day of the marathon bombings, has a letter Alex sent to him en route to his first tour of duty.
“I’ve never seen water this blue before,” he wrote. “I’ve never looked 360 degrees around and seen nothing but water, clouds and a fleet of battleships.
“It seems 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.
“I am not afraid of dying. I’m a Marine, proud to be fighting for my country.”
On this most American holiday, we give thanks for Puzzy and for Alex and for millions of others just like them.