By Cheryl Smith
Much like the proverbial elder who trudged long distances to school in the snow, wind and rain, Manuel Provencio trekked a couple of miles a day from school to his uncle Juan Galceran's shoe repair shop, where he pulled in a whopping 10 cents a day.
"They got an easy life now. ... Now they don't drive, they don't go to work," the still-fit 77-year-old said.
By Mark Lavergne
Donning a green flight jacket and a black hat emblazoned in gold capital letters with the words "Purple Heart," 78-year-old Concepción Pompa looks like a retired man able to indulge in his memories.
But that relaxed image belies a storied 40-year military career highlighted by a tour of duty in the South Pacific. Pompa started his military career when he volunteered for World War II, beginning a record of faithful service.
By Whitney Mizer
Eighty-two-year-old San Antonio resident Ester Arredondo Perez always worked hard to accomplish her goals, whether they were traveling the world or becoming the first Latino high school graduate in Fort Bend County, Texas.
By Gina Ross
World War II gave Xavier Pelaez many gruesome experiences -- from witnessing the horror of a concentration camp to the pain of being wounded in battle.
Pelaez was born in Los Angeles in 1925, his parents having moved from Nogales, Mexico, before he was born. His mother, Graciela Preciado, was a homemaker and his namesake father did various jobs wherever he could find work.
Pelaez graduated from Fremont High School in 1943, but knew his immediate future was with the service.
By Matt Harlan
The life of Ernesto Padilla is one marked with opportunities masked by tragedy.
Padilla’s childhood was spent with his large family in Puerto de Luna, N.M. The town, nestled on the Pecos River, was a community inhabited primarily by Latino ranchers and farmers.
"My dad had a general store and a cattle ranch, so for my age, I was pretty well enrolled in the activities that constitute farming and cattle ranching," Padilla said.
Farming, however, was unable to offer all he wanted in life.
By Ismael Martinez
Gilberto Ornelas saw the aftermath of one of the most important yet horrific inventions of the 20th Century. His experience almost killed him but granted him many opportunities.
By Guillermo X. Garcia
José Navarro, a 20-year-old farm boy with a limited education from segregated South Texas schools, went to war in 1942 to better himself.
By the time of his discharge, due to injury as a member of the U.S. Army's 99th Infantry Division, Navarro had fought in two of the most decisive Allied victories in Europe: the Allied invasion of Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge.
After the successful Normandy invasion, the Allies drove through the French countryside, engaging the Germans in major battles at Lieges and St.-Lo.
By Kristina Radke
Before World War II, Jesse Nava led a simple life in California, swimming in the Los Angeles River and gaining a strong work ethic from his immigrant father. But since the war, that carefree life has been elusive.
To help his father support the family, Nava was forced at age 17 to drop out of the predominantly Latino Roosevelt High School, where he was successful in breaking track and field records. In addition to his parents, Nava's family consisted of two brothers and two sisters.
By Celina Moreno
Jose Ruben Moreno attributes his success in life to a journey on the "line of least resistance." But enduring economic hardship and performing dangerous wartime duties as a counterintelligence spy in Panama proved anything but effortless.
Moreno was born in 1917 to Melchor Moreno and Lydia Saldivar in Brownsville, Texas. He attended a Catholic school to avoid the Protestant-run public schools, to which his parents had an aversion. At the school, courses were conducted in Spanish the first three years and thereafter primarily in English.
By BROOKE MEHARG
Juan Martinez smiled as he remembered receiving letters from proud siblings while he was stationed in the Philippines, telling him he was in their prayers.
"Thanks to God that their prayers went up to heaven," Martinez said.
Born in 1923, he grew up in La Gruya, Texas, between the cities of Mission and Rio Grande City, living with his grandmother until the age of 9 because of his parents' divorce. Unlike many families, his did not struggle economically by virtue of his father's successful bakery and Mexican food restaurant.
