Vietnam vet plans hero’s welcome for Rosario
Born decades apart, they were strangers who served in different wars — he in Vietnam, she in Afghanistan.
Both were Marines, except Ron Blanchette made it home, and Sgt. Johanny Rosario Pichardo didn’t.
That one fateful difference persuaded Blanchette to resolve to honor Rosario, 25.
The suicide bombing at the airport where people were being evacuated amid the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan killed 169 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members, including 11 Marines, a Navy corpsman and a U.S. Army soldier.
“This really tugged at my heart,” said Blanchette, 73, of Burlington. “When I heard it, I couldn’t stop crying. They would have been the last of America’s longest war.”
On Saturday, Blanchette, a former Belmont police chief, will stand in the breakdown lane on Interstate 93 North in Stoneham with his American and Marine flags as the motorcade accompanying Rosario’s casket and her family passes by sometime after 12:30 p.m.
“It’s heartbreaking, but she was doing what she loved to do,” he said, “helping as many as tens of thousands of women and children at Kabul Airport leave the country.”
Blanchette sent out an email blast to current and past service members and police, hoping they would do the same along the route, as the motorcade leaves Logan International Airport to Interstate 93 North, I-495 North, Route 114 West, Winthrop Avenue, Parker Street, Central Bridge, Canal Street; Lawrence Street, past Campagone Common, dedicated to three brothers from Lawrence who were killed during World War II.
From there, it will go Farrah Funeral Home at 133 Lawrence St.
“We want to honor her and show her family that we support them, even if we didn’t know her,” Blanchette said. ”You can’t prepare for something like that — to die in such a horrible way. She was so close to coming home.
“That’s the tragedy of war. No one wants to be the last. But they did their jobs, and they would do it again, I think.”
Former Massachusetts Secretary of Veterans’ Affairs Francisco Urena, a spokesman for Rosario’s
family, said that the family already is “extremely grateful” that people are giving “this hero the welcome home that she deserves.”
“In doing so,” he said, “you honor her service, her sacrifice and that of her family.”