Joe Garza
Posted on 03/19/2004 3:09:40 PM PST by SwinneySwitch
It's the little things about her husband that drift into Mary Garza's mind now and then.
Even on the busiest of days, when he worked from before dawn until well after dusk, he would make time for her, have lunch with her.
"My husband was a devoted soldier," she said. "He always told me that he had to make sure that his men came back safely. And they did. He was the only one who was killed."
As a 43-year-old first sergeant in the Third Infantry Division, Joe Garza had between 300 and 400 people under his command, his wife said.
Mary Garza moved back to the Coastal Bend from Fort Benning, Ga., after her husband died in a vehicle accident in Iraq. Joe Garza left behind his wife, his mother, three children and nine siblings, six of whom live in Robstown now.
Speaking about life without her husband, Mary Garza cries when talking about him and struggles to help her children cope with their loss.
"It's been horrible," she said. "Missing my husband, my children missing their dad. Our life's just been turned upside-down."
Garza chose only to discuss her husband's feelings when speaking about the war.
"He believed in his commander-in-chief," she said. "Whatever the president ordered. He was the first to say that he would follow the president, that he wouldn't question what the president had in mind."
Others in the family were not so discreet. Sev Lopez, Joe Garza's nephew, said he opposed the war.
"I was in Desert Storm," Lopez said. "We should have gotten all this taken care of 11 years ago It's awkward for me because I see my aunt and we go to church and I know it's real difficult for her to go through this. I wish this war would have never happened."
Garza's mother, Inez, hopes her son is now in a better place.
"Perhaps he was destined to die that way," she said. "We suffer here and we suffer. But where he is, he's not suffering anymore."
Contact Brad Olson at 886-3764 or olsonb@caller.com
Joe Garza
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