By Melanie Jarrett
By the time World War II ended, Guadalupe Garza had traveled hostile roads through French Morocco, Spanish Morocco, Algiers, Tunisia, Sicily, Italy, Gibraltar, Scotland, England, France, Belgium, Luxemburg, Germany and Austria.
In all, he experienced 480 days of combat.
By Sierra Brasher
Saragosa A. Garcia always marched to the beat of a different drum.
And his ability to play music, to change the tempo of his life, along with the assurance from carrying a treasured Holy Bible and his mother's prayers, may have helped him through tough times in World War II and in a segregated Texas.
Born Oct. 22, 1922, in Corpus Christi, Texas, to a family of musicians, Garcia says he was destined to play the drums.
By Doralis Perez-Soto
In December 1941, 18-year-old José Blas García traveled from his neighborhood of Trastalleres, an area among the swamps and mangrove trees near Caño de Martín Peña in Santurce, Puerto Rico, with four friends to enlist in the military at Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico. Of the five, only two were chosen, and young García was one of them. He says he had nothing better to do at the time.
By Shelby Tracy
Raymond J. Flores has always been a fighter.
He volunteered for the Army in the midst of World War II, but a defective leg kept him from fighting overseas.
His lifelong battle for freedom would be done on the home front.
Born in the small mining town of Miami in southwest Arizona, Flores was one of 17 brothers and sisters. His mother, Rosa Holguin Johnson, was from Tularosa, N.M., and his father, Aurelio Maldonado Flores, immigrated in 1905 from Guanajuato, Mexico.
By Lori Slaughenhoupt
Gregoria Esquivel was strongly influenced by her uncles who served in the military during World War II. Their patriotism and involvement in the war effort helped shape her perspective on life when she was only a child.
One of her uncles was wounded in a battle in Luxembourg and sent to a hospital in Texas. The visits to his bedside, seeing the numerous men wounded in the hospital, would have a lifelong impact on her, leading her to pursue a career in nursing.
By Shelley Hiam
Memories of childhood and his mother's mouth-watering cooking remain fresh on Pete Dimas' mind. Sopapillas, chili with carne sauce and delicious beans are some of the foods he remembers.
"Mother was an excellent cook. You name it, she had it. She could do breakfast too," Dimas said.
Although he grew up in the Depression, Dimas says his family didn't have a hard time as far as eating was concerned.
By Jonathan Alexander
A church gathering, a pink dress and a comment to a friend 60 years ago set in motion the story of Beatrice Dimas. The party provided the scene, her dress caught young Alfred Dimas' eye, and his words said it all: she would be his.
By Christopher Trout
Alfred Dimas has spent his life in pursuit of adventure. This pursuit took him across the United States to find work wherever he could during the Depression, and in 1942 it took him into the U.S. Army as a volunteer.
But no matter where Dimas went or what he did, he says he always worked to keep his family alive.
By Andrea Couch
Growing up in Santa Fe, N.M., in the '30s and '40s, Gilberto Delgado saw sign language for the first time: It was how one of his friends communicated with her deaf grandmother.
Later, that childhood exposure would lead him to take a role in education for the deaf, aiding him in earning his doctoral degree from Catholic University of America. Delgado also helped develop devices for the deaf, including closed-captioning for television and TTYs (text telephones) for phone communication.
By Clint Hale
Dealing with the harsh realities of World War II was tempered by experiences that Fred Davalos encountered in his youth. He’s more at ease relating the difficulties of his childhood than his experiences during the war, when he lost an eye.
Davalos served in the Army’s 551st Parachute Infantry Regiment at Sicily, the Invasion of France with the 887th Airborne Aviation Engineer Company, and the 517th Parachute Infantry Regiment Combat Team at the Battle of Ardennes. He was certified as a parachutist in 1944, only one year after he joined the military.
