One of our own comes home

MISSION - The hearse made the same trip down memory lane that Alex Gonzalez might have made himself had he returned from Iraq alive.

Followed by a slow procession of vans carrying his parents, sisters, uncles, aunts and cousins, the 21-year-old's flag-draped casket passed Marcell Elementary School, K. White Junior High and finally Mission High School, where Gonzalez graduated in 2005 after playing defensive end for the Eagles.

It stopped at his family's Barbara Avenue home, where his 13-year-old mutt, Lucky, barked at the black vehicle carrying his master.

"He (Gonzalez) was just making that last stop," said Gonzalez's uncle and godfather, Jorge Rodriguez. "His last trip home."

Gonzalez was killed May 6 by a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq. The U.S. Army specialist was on his first tour of duty there.

His body was flown into McAllen-Miller International Airport on Tuesday morning on a private charter plane before making its roundabout way to Virgil Wilson Funeral Home on Conway Avenue.

Mission residents stood along Conway, flags whipped by the breeze, and patiently waited to pay their respects.

Mage Trujillo, the owner of Pepe's On the River, stood under a tree with a fellow Vietnam vet. The soldiers coming home these days, he said, are too young.

"You see their photographs and you say, ‘My God, this one's just a child,'" he said. "But, in essence, they're grown men. They've grown up in the school of battle."

Nilda Anes stood at the airport with a sign saying "We love you."

"I didn't know him, but I'm part of Mothers of Military Servicemen and he was one of my boys," said Anes, who held a sign at the airport. Her son, Sgt. Mario Anes, is a U.S. Marine currently deployed in Iraq, she said.

Alex Gonzalez is set to be buried Saturday at 2 p.m. at Rio Grande Valley State Veterans Cemetery after a noon funeral Mass at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in Mission.

"It's just hard to believe he's gone," Jorge Rodriguez said. "He was tremendous."