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Homecoming steeped in sadness

BY GRAHAM RAYMAN | Newsday Staff Writer

May 9, 2006

It is barely a block from the small Corona, Queens, apartment where Jose Gomez grew up to the Rivera Funeral Home where the soldier was remembered.

And yet for his mother, Maria Gomez, his stepfather, Felix Jimenez, his fiancee, Marie Canario and other relatives who made that sad journey yesterday, it seemed very long.

Gomez, 23, an Army sergeant, was killed last week in Iraq when a roadside bomb exploded near his vehicle during a patrol. He was three months into his second Iraq tour, a fact he kept secret from his mother because he did not want to worry her.

"It's very hard to live with this," said Anna Araujo, a cousin, of Corona. "I talked to him a month ago and I told him, 'You come home. It's not necessary for you to be there.' He said he had to be there, but he was coming home in June or July."

Inside the funeral home, Maria Gomez knelt by her son's flag-draped coffin and cried as Jimenez draped an arm over her shoulders and whispered consoling words. One by one, other relatives walked over to the coffin. The room was silent, except for muffled sobs and the creaking of chairs.

Outside, Ricky Taveras, 12, recalled his upstairs neighbor as "really special."

"He was like a brother to me," he said. "He used to take me to Flushing Meadow Park or we would play games or watch movies."

The tragedy was compounded by the fact that in October 2003, Gomez lost his then-fiancee, Ana Laura Esparza Gutierrez, a soldier from Texas, to a roadside bomb in Iraq.

"There are no degrees of separation," said Rep. Gary Ackerman, a Queens Democrat who stopped by yesterday to offer his condolences. "This thing affects everybody."

Ackerman handed the family a flag that had flown over the U.S. Capitol building in Gomez's honor. "When you see something like this, it's not just a distant event," Ackerman said. "It makes the pain more intense and the questions more intense."

Meanwhile, a funeral was held in Arizona yesterday for 1st Sgt. Bobby Mendez of Brooklyn, who died April 27 in Iraq when a bomb exploded near his vehicle. He joined the Army in October 1987 and was assigned to the 2nd Special Troops Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division. Since January 2002, Mendez was an intelligence analyst. He was deployed to Iraq in November 2004.

Jimenez's friend Ed Salas said Gomez made the "ultimate sacrifice."

"It shows you the determination of all of the young men and women serving over there," he said.

The Gomez wake will continue today from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Rivera Funeral Home at 37th Avenue and 104th Street.

The funeral is tomorrow at 9:45 a.m. at Our Lady of Sorrows Church across the street, with a burial to follow at St. Michael's Cemetery in Astoria.