thedrifter
04-09-06, 01:39 PM
April 9, 2006
City People
On His Block, Candles That Still Flicker
By LOUISE RADNOFSKY
FOR three years, nylon flags of the United States and the Dominican Republic have fluttered in the wind in a small, brick-walled alcove on 180th Street, just west of St. Nicholas Avenue. They have bumped against red, white and blue balloons that are tied to a plastic crate, which in turn has been covered by another American flag and a ribbon that reads in Spanish, "I will never forget you, your mother." From a poster on the alcove's wall, the solemn face of Staff Sgt. Riayan Agusto Tejeda has stared out from under a white Marine cap onto the street where he grew up.
Upon learning that Sergeant Tejeda, 26, had been killed during combat in Iraq on April 11, 2003, neighbors flocked to his parents' apartment at 602 West 180th Street. As is the custom when young Washington Heights men die suddenly, often violently, neighbors piled flowers and lighted candles outside the victim's home, creating a small but eloquent shrine.
Six months after his death, the block where Sergeant Tejeda lived was renamed for him. A year later, the local branch of the post office was renamed in his honor. The shrine became permanent, maintained by his parents; local residents continued to light the candles.
In death, Riayan Tejeda has become one of the neighborhood's most famous citizens.
Friends and neighbors knew him as a happy kid — and a good one — who liked to hang out at the Latin music clubs along Dyckman Street, and managed to keep out of trouble at a time when there was more than enough of it on the streets. They idolized him when he returned on leave, and when he was killed, he became, as the words above his military portrait proclaim, "Our First Dominican Hero."
"He was calm, more than his brothers were, and different from the other boys around here too," said Rafael Lopez, who moved next door to the Tejedas nearly a decade ago. "Normally when someone dies, people forget. But not him."
Riayan Tejeda was born in 1976 on the outskirts of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. His parents were separated when his mother, Rafaela Carmen Lora, met and fell in love with an American, Julio Cesar Tejeda, who was revisiting the country of his birth after 20 years in the states. In 1984 Mr. Tejeda brought his new bride to America; the next year, he secured visas for her three sons, Riayan, then 9, and his two younger brothers, making them legal residents.
The family moved to West 180th Street, where the stepfather got a job as the building's super. On weekends, the boys played basketball and baseball in the streets; two decades later, a City Council bill calling for renaming the street in Riayan Tejeda's memory would mention his record as "a solid baseball player" — no small honor in a community where Manny Ramirez, the Red Sox powerhouse and fellow Dominican, spent his teens.
In 1992, the summer before he began his junior year at Fashion Industries High School, riots erupted in Washington Heights after a police officer shot a drug suspect to death. The neighborhood was regarded as the crack cocaine distribution center for the Northeast; that year, the 34th Precinct recorded 98 homicides.
At 17, the good kid had kept himself out of trouble. At noon on his last day of high school, he took the No. 1 train uptown, but instead of heading home or to his job at a local shoe store, he walked into the military recruiting office on West 181st Street, where a long staircase leads to rooms for each of the different service recruiters, past posters advertising "The Few, The Brave, The Proud." Then he went home and told his parents that he had enlisted.
They didn't try to dissuade him. "We said we'd support whatever he did," Mr. Tejeda said. "In those times, there was nothing to worry about."
Four days later, the son was sent to Parris Island, the South Carolina boot camp; in a father-and-son photograph taken on graduation day, it is hard to say which of the two looked more excited.
The newly minted marine was posted to California, then Hawaii, where he met and married a fellow marine, Dena Harrison. His parents visited the couple when they moved back to California, adding snapshots to their photo album of Mrs. Tejeda with her first granddaughters, Miranda and Loriana.
Back in Washington Heights, the Tejedas' apartment was crammed with gifts sent by their eldest son from his various tours of duty. From Hawaii, he sent his mother a vase that he said was decorated with 24-karat gold. From Japan, he sent a carefully wrapped plasma screen television set; the Tejedas were the first on their block to have one. Other souvenirs arrived, from Bosnia, Afghanistan and China.
In December 2002, Sergeant Tejeda telephoned his parents to tell them that he had been granted an unexpected leave, and on New Year's Eve the extended family was gathered in the Dominican Republic. "Everything was fine and beautiful," Mr. Tejeda said of the reunion with his stepson, "but something went wrong soon after midnight. He got a call on his cellphone; they were using marine language."
SERGEANT TEJEDA was ordered to be back in New York by Jan. 2, and in California the next day. When he arrived in New York, a group of friends headed to a restaurant in the Bronx that played their favorite bachata music. They bought two bottles of vodka, then two more. Then they drove Sergeant Tejeda to the airport. During the evening, he had announced out of the blue: "I'm going to get drunk, because it's the last time I'm going to get drunk in New York. I'm never going to return here."
On April 9, 2003, along with many neighbors, the Tejedas watched the fall of Baghdad on their old television set (the plasma screen was still in its box), looking for their son's face. The next day, Mrs. Tejeda insisted that her husband ask the recruiting office for news of their son. "They told me not to worry," the stepfather said. "They said if something happened, we would see two officers."
One day that weekend, just before noon, Mrs. Tejeda saw two marines in full-dress uniform standing outside her kitchen window. "They're here!" she shrieked. "They killed my son!"
Pentagon officials later told the family that. Sergeant Tejeda had died in a battle in northeast Baghdad.
It was more than a week before Mr. Tejeda could identify his stepson's body at the Ortiz Funeral Home on Broadway and 189th Street. When he came home, his wife jumped at him, screaming, "Tell me it was the wrong body, that they made a mistake!"
On April 21, a military funeral was held at St. Elizabeth's Church on Wadsworth Avenue. Mayor Bloomberg spoke at the service, as did Representative Charles B. Rangel, who later proposed legislation renaming the post office and conferring posthumous American citizenship on Sergeant Tejeda.
The Tejedas retreated to their apartment, consoling themselves with these tributes.
"Riayan never wanted to become a citizen," Mr. Tejeda said. "But we received it, because everything done for him is an honor."
Ellie
City People
On His Block, Candles That Still Flicker
By LOUISE RADNOFSKY
FOR three years, nylon flags of the United States and the Dominican Republic have fluttered in the wind in a small, brick-walled alcove on 180th Street, just west of St. Nicholas Avenue. They have bumped against red, white and blue balloons that are tied to a plastic crate, which in turn has been covered by another American flag and a ribbon that reads in Spanish, "I will never forget you, your mother." From a poster on the alcove's wall, the solemn face of Staff Sgt. Riayan Agusto Tejeda has stared out from under a white Marine cap onto the street where he grew up.
Upon learning that Sergeant Tejeda, 26, had been killed during combat in Iraq on April 11, 2003, neighbors flocked to his parents' apartment at 602 West 180th Street. As is the custom when young Washington Heights men die suddenly, often violently, neighbors piled flowers and lighted candles outside the victim's home, creating a small but eloquent shrine.
Six months after his death, the block where Sergeant Tejeda lived was renamed for him. A year later, the local branch of the post office was renamed in his honor. The shrine became permanent, maintained by his parents; local residents continued to light the candles.
In death, Riayan Tejeda has become one of the neighborhood's most famous citizens.
Friends and neighbors knew him as a happy kid — and a good one — who liked to hang out at the Latin music clubs along Dyckman Street, and managed to keep out of trouble at a time when there was more than enough of it on the streets. They idolized him when he returned on leave, and when he was killed, he became, as the words above his military portrait proclaim, "Our First Dominican Hero."
"He was calm, more than his brothers were, and different from the other boys around here too," said Rafael Lopez, who moved next door to the Tejedas nearly a decade ago. "Normally when someone dies, people forget. But not him."
Riayan Tejeda was born in 1976 on the outskirts of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. His parents were separated when his mother, Rafaela Carmen Lora, met and fell in love with an American, Julio Cesar Tejeda, who was revisiting the country of his birth after 20 years in the states. In 1984 Mr. Tejeda brought his new bride to America; the next year, he secured visas for her three sons, Riayan, then 9, and his two younger brothers, making them legal residents.
The family moved to West 180th Street, where the stepfather got a job as the building's super. On weekends, the boys played basketball and baseball in the streets; two decades later, a City Council bill calling for renaming the street in Riayan Tejeda's memory would mention his record as "a solid baseball player" — no small honor in a community where Manny Ramirez, the Red Sox powerhouse and fellow Dominican, spent his teens.
In 1992, the summer before he began his junior year at Fashion Industries High School, riots erupted in Washington Heights after a police officer shot a drug suspect to death. The neighborhood was regarded as the crack cocaine distribution center for the Northeast; that year, the 34th Precinct recorded 98 homicides.
At 17, the good kid had kept himself out of trouble. At noon on his last day of high school, he took the No. 1 train uptown, but instead of heading home or to his job at a local shoe store, he walked into the military recruiting office on West 181st Street, where a long staircase leads to rooms for each of the different service recruiters, past posters advertising "The Few, The Brave, The Proud." Then he went home and told his parents that he had enlisted.
They didn't try to dissuade him. "We said we'd support whatever he did," Mr. Tejeda said. "In those times, there was nothing to worry about."
Four days later, the son was sent to Parris Island, the South Carolina boot camp; in a father-and-son photograph taken on graduation day, it is hard to say which of the two looked more excited.
The newly minted marine was posted to California, then Hawaii, where he met and married a fellow marine, Dena Harrison. His parents visited the couple when they moved back to California, adding snapshots to their photo album of Mrs. Tejeda with her first granddaughters, Miranda and Loriana.
Back in Washington Heights, the Tejedas' apartment was crammed with gifts sent by their eldest son from his various tours of duty. From Hawaii, he sent his mother a vase that he said was decorated with 24-karat gold. From Japan, he sent a carefully wrapped plasma screen television set; the Tejedas were the first on their block to have one. Other souvenirs arrived, from Bosnia, Afghanistan and China.
In December 2002, Sergeant Tejeda telephoned his parents to tell them that he had been granted an unexpected leave, and on New Year's Eve the extended family was gathered in the Dominican Republic. "Everything was fine and beautiful," Mr. Tejeda said of the reunion with his stepson, "but something went wrong soon after midnight. He got a call on his cellphone; they were using marine language."
SERGEANT TEJEDA was ordered to be back in New York by Jan. 2, and in California the next day. When he arrived in New York, a group of friends headed to a restaurant in the Bronx that played their favorite bachata music. They bought two bottles of vodka, then two more. Then they drove Sergeant Tejeda to the airport. During the evening, he had announced out of the blue: "I'm going to get drunk, because it's the last time I'm going to get drunk in New York. I'm never going to return here."
On April 9, 2003, along with many neighbors, the Tejedas watched the fall of Baghdad on their old television set (the plasma screen was still in its box), looking for their son's face. The next day, Mrs. Tejeda insisted that her husband ask the recruiting office for news of their son. "They told me not to worry," the stepfather said. "They said if something happened, we would see two officers."
One day that weekend, just before noon, Mrs. Tejeda saw two marines in full-dress uniform standing outside her kitchen window. "They're here!" she shrieked. "They killed my son!"
Pentagon officials later told the family that. Sergeant Tejeda had died in a battle in northeast Baghdad.
It was more than a week before Mr. Tejeda could identify his stepson's body at the Ortiz Funeral Home on Broadway and 189th Street. When he came home, his wife jumped at him, screaming, "Tell me it was the wrong body, that they made a mistake!"
On April 21, a military funeral was held at St. Elizabeth's Church on Wadsworth Avenue. Mayor Bloomberg spoke at the service, as did Representative Charles B. Rangel, who later proposed legislation renaming the post office and conferring posthumous American citizenship on Sergeant Tejeda.
The Tejedas retreated to their apartment, consoling themselves with these tributes.
"Riayan never wanted to become a citizen," Mr. Tejeda said. "But we received it, because everything done for him is an honor."
Ellie