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Local Marine was ready to leave Iraq
BY MARK FONTECCHIO
The Patriot Ledger
Published Sept. 6, 2004
BOSTON — Lance Cpl. Alexander Arredondo arrived at the doors of St. Thomas Aquinas Church in his own coffin, draped with an American flag and carried by six fellow Marines.
It was a brilliant Saturday morning and the Marines wore honor guard uniforms that included trousers with the signature Marine Corps blood stripe down the side.
When the 20-year-old came in, almost everyone stood, often with one hand folded over the other. There were scores of people waiting.
The only one not standing was his father Carlos, wrapped in gauze and laying on a stretcher in the church. Carlos has burns on 26 percent of his body that he gave himself when he was told of Alexander’s death in Iraq and reacted by setting a Marine Corps van on fire with a propane tank and blowtorch.
The burns almost kept Carlos away from the funeral, but a different kind of wound brought him from Florida, where he moved from Boston last year.
“We gather together in a moment of unspeakable sadness and tragedy,” the Rev. James Laughlin said at the church in Jamaica Plain, a neighborhood of Boston where Alexander once lived. “Especially for those of you who have known and loved Alex the most.”
The soldier was based with the 1st Marine Division from Camp Pendleton, Calif. He was killed in combat on Aug. 24 in Najaf where American forces were fighting Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
It was a culmination for which Arredondo, of Randolph, had prepared. He wanted to be a leatherneck since 16 and enlisted in 2002 after graduating from high school. Less than 12 hours before death he called his mother, Victoria Foley, to tell her that fighting that night was going to get rough but he was ready for it.
On Saturday, it was clear that many were not ready for Arredondo to return home in his own coffin.
“It would be foolish for me as a priest to try to explain away this death,” the Rev. Laughlin said.
Arredondo’s death has received national media attention because his father set himself on fire upon hearing of it. But there are plenty of others. Since Arredondo died, the Department of Defense has announced the deaths of a half-dozen other Marines, from Pennsylvania, from Idaho, from California.
But in Jamaica Plain on Saturday, it was all about Alex.
“Not only can I call him my best friend,” close buddy Elia Contos said. “I am proud to call him a brother and a hero.”
After the Mass, they rolled Alexander out and the six Marines hoisted him back into the hearse. Inside the church Amadee Castenell, a New Orleans musician and husband of one of Alex’s cousins, played “Amazing Grace” on his saxophone.
“It was the least I could do,” he said afterward. “I’m family.”
From there a 127-car procession left with Alex leading the way. After traveling thousands of miles to reach St. Thomas Aquinas, Alexander’s journey was to last another 17 miles, through Jamaica Plain, onto the VFW Parkway in West Roxbury and toward Rural Cemetery in Walpole.
It was around noon then and families came out of their homes that surround the small graveyard. Children rode their bikes to the scene and parked them there. They lifted American flags and waved them while three shots rang out and a bugler played taps.
The Marines folded the flag on Alexander’s casket and handed it to Carlos, his father. Two paramedics lowered the stretcher and the father leaned over to kiss the coffin.
Then someone gave Carlos a handful of dirt and he scattered it over his son. Then he sobbed as the cemetery crew lowered the soldier into the American soil.
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