thedrifter
06-25-07, 05:49 AM
Marines in the making
The Beacon News
June 24, 2007
When they turned 17, the three young men separately walked into the local recruitment office in Aurora and enlisted in the Marine Corps.
It was an anticlimactic moment, a decision they had already come to years ago. It also was a decision that would spur many long conversations and tearful questions from family members in the year that followed.
The biggest question they answer with ease: Why join five years into a war that's not only losing popularity, but has also cost the lives of some 3,400 Americans, including three Marines who graduated from their own East Aurora High School?
They don't speak about politics; They rarely follow the news from Iraq. They enlisted to protect their country, sure. But being a Marine means something far more personal than patriotism, something far greater than one battle or one cause.
To them -- three close friends who call themselves brothers -- this is about the lure of a world beyond Aurora, the ultimate test of guts, and proving, if only to themselves, they can push beyond their limits and never show a hint of fear.
"If I were scared," said Ignacio Galindo, the jokester whom the other two call "Nacho", "I would have joined the National Guard."
But they enlisted in the Marine Corps -- "the first to fight," declared Max Escutia, a tall teen with pretty boy looks, who introduced the other two. "When I hear about Marines dying, I want to go there so I can finish their job. I kind of want that war to continue, because I want to see combat."
And as for the possibility of their own deaths, "Ultimately, if it's going to happen, it's going to happen," said Joseph Salgado, a fan of Disney characters and the shyest of the three, whom they nicknamed "Boxer."
These are, at least, the answers they give when their parents aren't listening. When their families are around, the 18-year-olds know "combat" is a word that makes Dad shudder; and death an idea that brings Mom to tears.
So they give hugs and I'll-miss-you's, trying to balance shows of courage with displays of affection. In the end, though, they stand firmly behind their decisions.
They are, after all, Marines in the making.
This is the diary of their last month at home.
April 30: Drill practice
Thirty-four days to go
At one of the last East High Naval Junior ROTC practices, groups of wide-eyed freshmen sit at the edges of the school gym, as 13 cadets in the armed exhibition drill team march down the middle, spinning and throwing their 8-pound replica rifles in a well-rehearsed routine.
"Just waiting their turn for next year," says Master Chief Petty Officer Ken Mrnak, eyeing the freshmen eying his drill team.
Boxer stands in front of the squad, arms folded, inspecting each precise move, every coordinated formation.
Soft-spoken but serious, he leads the select group made up of Nacho, Max and other seniors, who practice at a minimum three times a week, and spend their winter and spring breaks working through routines.
Boxer lived with his grandmother in Texas his freshman year after he started getting into trouble in Aurora. There, he trained with a Marine Corps Junior ROTC, and when he moved back to his mom's house as a sophomore, he joined the armed exhibition drill team and was voted commander the next year.
"I was just the best one," he explains flatly.
When Boxer first met Max, the two testosterone-charged teens barely evaded a hallway fight after exchanging menacing looks. But as easily as unspoken high school rivalries are made, theirs dissolved when Max noticed Boxer wearing a Marines T-shirt to class.
Eventually, Max introduced Boxer to Nacho, his best friend from seventh grade. Max and Nacho, two boys raised by divorced dads, formed a fast bond after teachers yelled at them for causing trouble during a Waldo Middle School class. Their decision to join the ROTC two years later, said their fathers, brought a noticeable boost in self-esteem and pushed the two mediocre students to show up for school and stay off the streets.
After the April practice, the three sit in the school's ROTC room, chatting about girlfriends and after-school jobs -- and counting down the days until they leave.
Nacho says his father seemed OK when he enlisted, but later pulled him aside and burst into tears. "He said, 'I don't want you to go, but I want you to be a man, and you got to make your own decisions,'" Nacho recalls, as the others chime in with similar stories.
"You know, I just want some of that action out there," Nacho says. "And who else is going to do it?"
May 10: Final performance
Twenty-four days to go
In crisp white shirts belted into pressed black slacks, the students in the armed exhibition drill team are a still block in a slouching, chaotic crowd of teens in oversized T-shirts and hoop earrings. Mrnak introduces them over the microphone in the gymnasium, Boxer calls out a few reminders and they march to center stage.
"Sir! East Aurora High School NJROTC Unit!" Boxer shouts, punctuating the introduction with a sharp salute.
During the routine, Max and Boxer perform a duet of tricks flawlessly, but two other cadets drop their rifles -- and giggles carry through the audience.
Afterward, several cadets throw down their rifles, angry that the students laughed, and because Boxer had called off a secret move they'd practiced when Mrnak wasn't watching. They called it "twin towers": They were going to lift two cadets up and spin a rifle high in the air. But Boxer nixed it in the middle of the performance because he thought it was too risky.
"I made the right decision," he says softly but firmly.
"We should have done it out there," retorts one of the guys, as Boxer suggests they perform the move for a photographer.
"When it counted," protests another, as the two head to the door.
After his peers leave, Boxer sits alone in the ROTC office.
"I made the right decision," he repeats gravely.
May 12: Prom night
Twenty-two days to go
When Nacho arrives, Max is in his living room in a black Marine Corps T-shirt tucked into white tuxedo pants. The two scurry into Max's room, shutting the door behind them. On the other side, hangs a poster with the inscription: "The few. The proud. The Marines."
"That's his life," says Max Escutia, Sr., as he gazes toward his son's closed door.
His wife, Lorena, sits quietly at his side at the dining table as he recalls how, when Max first joined the drill team, he used a large stick found in the backyard as a stand-in for his rifle, Max would stay alone outside, regularly past dark, practicing his maneuvers over and over.
The way Escutia tells it, his son marched up to him after turning 17 last October and declared, "Dad, I know you're not going to sign, but I'm going to join anyway when I turn 18."
His father, pushing back the thoughts of "kids getting killed," went to the recruitment office to give the parental consent needed for his only child to enlist in the Marine Corps.
"No good," he says of his son's decision. "Soldiers getting killed, for what? It's kind of scary ... I don't like it. But I've got to show support."
The door swings open. Max parades out, groomed and dressed in an all-white ensemble. Nacho saunters across the room, donning a pin-striped black-and-white tux and flipping a matching felt hat onto his head. They're trying to play it cool, but their excitement is too clear as they talk about taking pictures at Phillips Park, dancing at the Fox Valley Country Club and accompanying their dates along the Naperville Riverwalk afterward.
Flashing grins, they're out the door to pick up the girls, and Escutia and his wife let their own melancholy smiles linger after them.
"He wants to be someone in the future," Escutia muses. "I just worry so much. Too much."
May 17: Boxing workout
Seventeen days to go
Always the patient leader, Boxer waits in a dingy Fox Valley Park District recreation center room for a friend who wants to learn some moves from him.
Boxer's uncle used to take him to watch pay-per-view fights at friends' homes when he was a little boy, and he started training at former pro-boxer Jesse Torres' Aurora gym two years ago. He's never been in a real match before but he plans to join the All-Marine Boxing Team.
When his muscles get big, he says, he's going to get a tattoo of Mickey Mouse in a Marine uniform, holding boxing gloves. And when he leaves the Marines, he's going to get his associates degree in business from Joliet Junior College, become a professional boxer and manage his own fights.
Twenty minutes late, his friend finally arrives.
The Marines, Boxer explains as the bag flies from his fist, "it's the toughest, the hardest. I'm not going to take the easy way."
But bootcamp, he says, readjusting the tape on his wrists before throwing another round of punches, "it'll be a piece of cake."
May 21: Recruit training
Thirteen days to go
Staff Sgt. Anthony Rubio studies the summer crop of Marine recruits as two dozen teens chase a soccer ball in a game with no goalies.
They don't know yet how tough boot camp will be, Rubio says. They'll miss having girls around, and spend the first few weeks in shock as stress and discipline replace their teenage world.
Nacho, he predicts, will struggle mentally, though he's physically strong. Boxer is mentally tough but not very big. And Max, he guesses, will struggle a little bit in both areas.
But in the almost 18 months Rubio's worked in the Aurora office, just three of his 71 recruits have failed boot camp. So Boxer, Max and Nacho -- among the only recruits with ROTC training -- will do just fine.
The three had first approached the 26-year-old recruiter when Rubio was passing out pamphlets in the East High lunchroom. The summer after their sophomore year, Rubio served as a drill instructor during a mini boot camp for high schoolers, and Boxer wound up in his platoon. The two became close, as Rubio shared stories from his Marine experience. Soon Boxer "was sold," Rubio says.
By their junior year, Boxer had referred Max and Nacho to Rubio, who interviewed them on how strongly they value Marine traits, like courage, self-reliance, challenge, leadership, travel and adventure.
"We sell the intangibles," Rubio says. "A lot of times I tell my recruits, 'Don't join the Marine Corps for a job. Join because you want to be a Marine.'"
The Marines have few problems finding new recruits -- the local office ships them out every week in June, July and August, between 38 and 50 each summer. Nationwide, the Marine Corps runs two full boot camps of seven companies, which each contain anywhere from 480 to 600 recruits.
The trouble, Rubio says, is keeping them in the service. Retention rates are dropping, and many simply don't know what they're getting into. "Surprisingly the war doesn't seem to come up (in conversations with recruits)," Rubio says, before adding a quick afterthought.
"Well, with the parents it does."
May 25: Graduation Day
Nine days to go
Nacho smiles and holds up nine fingers as he files onto East High's football field with the line of teens in black caps and gowns. It's graduation day, but his excitement isn't about the culmination. He's anticipating a beginning.
"Nine days," he mouths.
Standing inside his open garage, Ignacio Galindo, Sr. counts down, too. "Eleven years," he calculates slowly, looking down at a framed photograph of 7-year-old Nacho, grinning a toothy smile. He flicks at a cigarette, then swipes the heal of a palm across his eyes.
"I'm so proud of my son," he repeats several times.
A single father who tackles his taller teenage son with bear hugs, Galindo moved them into his mother's home several years ago. Swinging her feet lightly from a chair in the garage, Nacho's grandmother, Eusenia Galindo, says she's watched out for him, cooking dinners and checking report cards, especially when his were on the brink of failing this semester.
"I was praying to God he wouldn't graduate," she says, unashamed she'd take any excuse to keep him at home.
As the ceremony starts, Nacho's father arrives alone and stands to the side of the bleachers. He leans up against the rails and watches the field without expression.
Valedictorian Elizabeth Gerhard steps up to make a speech: "I think there is a little fear in each of us," she says. "(But) the time has come for us to walk across the stage and receive our diplomas ...
The time has come for us to be the future."
The students file into line as an announcer calls out their names:
"...Max Escutia."
"...Ignacio Nick Galindo."
"...Joseph Salgado."
One by one, the three stride across the stage, heads up, all smiles and confidence.
If any fear remained, they weren't letting on.
June 1: Goodbye Party
Two days to go
Money is tight, but Eusenia Galindo isn't about to let her grandson leave without a party. So she and Nacho's aunts, uncles and cousins scurry around the backyard on a windy Friday afternoon, tying together American flag balloons and banners; taping down red, white and blue tablecloths.
"All we need now is Uncle Sam standing in the corner," Eusenia says happily.
Earlier that afternoon, at a separate patriotic display, East High had held a tribute for the school's three Marines killed in Iraq. Speaking during a dedication to the three men's tearful mothers, Fox Valley Marine Corps Commandant Michael Rankin paraphrased Ronald Reagan: "Some men it takes a whole lifetime to know if they make a difference.
"The Marines don't have a problem," he said. "We know."
Behind all the talk of bravado and adventure, Nacho also seems concerned with finding a purpose, however undefined. An easygoing teen who shares his father's goofy sense of humor, he once dreamed of becoming a cop. Now he plans to spend at least 20 years in the Marine Corps, one day taking on an officer position.
This new path, he shrugs, is not so different. "A protector," he labels both.
The Galindo guests, mostly more extended family, arrive over the next few hours, filling the backyard with giddy children and cheery chatter. Sitting in the kitchen that evening, away from the guests, Nacho says he'll miss them all "just a little bit." But he's too anxious to leave.
"I just hope there's a lot of action," he says.
Overhearing his son from the other room, Galindo calls out:
"I'm hoping he don't get to see no action."
June 3: D-Day
Minutes before 6 p.m., the time Staff Sgt. Rubio is scheduled to pick up Boxer, his mother sits silently at the end of a couch in their living room. In the corner, slightly-deflated balloons call out: "Congrats, grad!" and "You'll be missed!" A blow-up camouflage gun dangles off a nearby love seat.
Elizabeth Cervantes looks up as her oldest son walks down the stairs, one arm around his 7-year-old sister.
"I don't think you can ever be ready," Cervantes says, leaving it unclear whether she's referring to herself or her son.
The family gathers in the living room, saying few words to each other. Boxer clutches a notebook filled with letters he's written to his girlfriend.
"I'm going to miss my girlfriend," he says, before catching his mom's gaze across the room. "But I'm going to miss my mom more."
She smiles back at him, sweetly and sadly, a hand hiding most of her mouth.
Rubio pulls into their driveway at 6:12, and then stands stoically in the doorway. He never knows what to expect when he picks up recruits from their home. Sometimes he spends an hour there, with tearful families full of questions. Sometimes, the young men and women are standing alone at the door, ready to go.
At Boxer's house, Cervantes meets his eyes. "Are you ready to take my kid?" she asks him.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Shame on you."
Boxer hugs his mom, burying his head in her neck, and whispers "I love you" into her ear.
He kisses his sister, hugs his step-dad, demands a better hug from his brother. He returns to Cervantes, kisses her four times, and whispers "I'll be back, Mom."
Then, Boxer turns and walks out the door. The message on the back of his gray Marines T-shirt reads: "Pain is weakness."
With Boxer in the car, Rubio drives to Nacho's home, where more than a dozen extended family members have gathered on the driveway for group hugs, photographs and chain reactions of tears and laughs.
Galindo grabs his son and cries shamelessly into his shoulder. "I'm gonna miss you like crazy," he says, before giving him a shove. "Go!"
At about 7:40 p.m., Max's father looks out the window. Rubio's car pulls up for the last stop, and Escutia sighs.
"That's not a good sight for me," he says.
They say their good-byes calmly on the front porch, as Rubio explains how to book a hotel in San Diego for the boot camp graduation. Then Max turns and walks away. In a few minutes, Escutia and his wife will remain on the front lawn, silent as they watch Rubio's car drive off.
In a few hours, the three will spend the night at a Radisson Hotel in Des Plaines, where they'll receive a 4 a.m. wake-up call. Then they'll fill out paperwork, undergo a physical and pick up their plane tickets to San Diego.
In one week and six days, Elizabeth Cervantes will receive her first letter from Boxer, telling her that the food is terrible and his body aches.
And if all goes according to plan, the three will graduate from boot camp in 13 weeks, return home for 10 days, and ship out again, this time as real Marines.
But right now, Max turns and smiles -- for a few seconds longer, just a teen with no ranks, no fears, no knowledge yet of real combat.
"I'll see you guys soon," he says.
Ellie
The Beacon News
June 24, 2007
When they turned 17, the three young men separately walked into the local recruitment office in Aurora and enlisted in the Marine Corps.
It was an anticlimactic moment, a decision they had already come to years ago. It also was a decision that would spur many long conversations and tearful questions from family members in the year that followed.
The biggest question they answer with ease: Why join five years into a war that's not only losing popularity, but has also cost the lives of some 3,400 Americans, including three Marines who graduated from their own East Aurora High School?
They don't speak about politics; They rarely follow the news from Iraq. They enlisted to protect their country, sure. But being a Marine means something far more personal than patriotism, something far greater than one battle or one cause.
To them -- three close friends who call themselves brothers -- this is about the lure of a world beyond Aurora, the ultimate test of guts, and proving, if only to themselves, they can push beyond their limits and never show a hint of fear.
"If I were scared," said Ignacio Galindo, the jokester whom the other two call "Nacho", "I would have joined the National Guard."
But they enlisted in the Marine Corps -- "the first to fight," declared Max Escutia, a tall teen with pretty boy looks, who introduced the other two. "When I hear about Marines dying, I want to go there so I can finish their job. I kind of want that war to continue, because I want to see combat."
And as for the possibility of their own deaths, "Ultimately, if it's going to happen, it's going to happen," said Joseph Salgado, a fan of Disney characters and the shyest of the three, whom they nicknamed "Boxer."
These are, at least, the answers they give when their parents aren't listening. When their families are around, the 18-year-olds know "combat" is a word that makes Dad shudder; and death an idea that brings Mom to tears.
So they give hugs and I'll-miss-you's, trying to balance shows of courage with displays of affection. In the end, though, they stand firmly behind their decisions.
They are, after all, Marines in the making.
This is the diary of their last month at home.
April 30: Drill practice
Thirty-four days to go
At one of the last East High Naval Junior ROTC practices, groups of wide-eyed freshmen sit at the edges of the school gym, as 13 cadets in the armed exhibition drill team march down the middle, spinning and throwing their 8-pound replica rifles in a well-rehearsed routine.
"Just waiting their turn for next year," says Master Chief Petty Officer Ken Mrnak, eyeing the freshmen eying his drill team.
Boxer stands in front of the squad, arms folded, inspecting each precise move, every coordinated formation.
Soft-spoken but serious, he leads the select group made up of Nacho, Max and other seniors, who practice at a minimum three times a week, and spend their winter and spring breaks working through routines.
Boxer lived with his grandmother in Texas his freshman year after he started getting into trouble in Aurora. There, he trained with a Marine Corps Junior ROTC, and when he moved back to his mom's house as a sophomore, he joined the armed exhibition drill team and was voted commander the next year.
"I was just the best one," he explains flatly.
When Boxer first met Max, the two testosterone-charged teens barely evaded a hallway fight after exchanging menacing looks. But as easily as unspoken high school rivalries are made, theirs dissolved when Max noticed Boxer wearing a Marines T-shirt to class.
Eventually, Max introduced Boxer to Nacho, his best friend from seventh grade. Max and Nacho, two boys raised by divorced dads, formed a fast bond after teachers yelled at them for causing trouble during a Waldo Middle School class. Their decision to join the ROTC two years later, said their fathers, brought a noticeable boost in self-esteem and pushed the two mediocre students to show up for school and stay off the streets.
After the April practice, the three sit in the school's ROTC room, chatting about girlfriends and after-school jobs -- and counting down the days until they leave.
Nacho says his father seemed OK when he enlisted, but later pulled him aside and burst into tears. "He said, 'I don't want you to go, but I want you to be a man, and you got to make your own decisions,'" Nacho recalls, as the others chime in with similar stories.
"You know, I just want some of that action out there," Nacho says. "And who else is going to do it?"
May 10: Final performance
Twenty-four days to go
In crisp white shirts belted into pressed black slacks, the students in the armed exhibition drill team are a still block in a slouching, chaotic crowd of teens in oversized T-shirts and hoop earrings. Mrnak introduces them over the microphone in the gymnasium, Boxer calls out a few reminders and they march to center stage.
"Sir! East Aurora High School NJROTC Unit!" Boxer shouts, punctuating the introduction with a sharp salute.
During the routine, Max and Boxer perform a duet of tricks flawlessly, but two other cadets drop their rifles -- and giggles carry through the audience.
Afterward, several cadets throw down their rifles, angry that the students laughed, and because Boxer had called off a secret move they'd practiced when Mrnak wasn't watching. They called it "twin towers": They were going to lift two cadets up and spin a rifle high in the air. But Boxer nixed it in the middle of the performance because he thought it was too risky.
"I made the right decision," he says softly but firmly.
"We should have done it out there," retorts one of the guys, as Boxer suggests they perform the move for a photographer.
"When it counted," protests another, as the two head to the door.
After his peers leave, Boxer sits alone in the ROTC office.
"I made the right decision," he repeats gravely.
May 12: Prom night
Twenty-two days to go
When Nacho arrives, Max is in his living room in a black Marine Corps T-shirt tucked into white tuxedo pants. The two scurry into Max's room, shutting the door behind them. On the other side, hangs a poster with the inscription: "The few. The proud. The Marines."
"That's his life," says Max Escutia, Sr., as he gazes toward his son's closed door.
His wife, Lorena, sits quietly at his side at the dining table as he recalls how, when Max first joined the drill team, he used a large stick found in the backyard as a stand-in for his rifle, Max would stay alone outside, regularly past dark, practicing his maneuvers over and over.
The way Escutia tells it, his son marched up to him after turning 17 last October and declared, "Dad, I know you're not going to sign, but I'm going to join anyway when I turn 18."
His father, pushing back the thoughts of "kids getting killed," went to the recruitment office to give the parental consent needed for his only child to enlist in the Marine Corps.
"No good," he says of his son's decision. "Soldiers getting killed, for what? It's kind of scary ... I don't like it. But I've got to show support."
The door swings open. Max parades out, groomed and dressed in an all-white ensemble. Nacho saunters across the room, donning a pin-striped black-and-white tux and flipping a matching felt hat onto his head. They're trying to play it cool, but their excitement is too clear as they talk about taking pictures at Phillips Park, dancing at the Fox Valley Country Club and accompanying their dates along the Naperville Riverwalk afterward.
Flashing grins, they're out the door to pick up the girls, and Escutia and his wife let their own melancholy smiles linger after them.
"He wants to be someone in the future," Escutia muses. "I just worry so much. Too much."
May 17: Boxing workout
Seventeen days to go
Always the patient leader, Boxer waits in a dingy Fox Valley Park District recreation center room for a friend who wants to learn some moves from him.
Boxer's uncle used to take him to watch pay-per-view fights at friends' homes when he was a little boy, and he started training at former pro-boxer Jesse Torres' Aurora gym two years ago. He's never been in a real match before but he plans to join the All-Marine Boxing Team.
When his muscles get big, he says, he's going to get a tattoo of Mickey Mouse in a Marine uniform, holding boxing gloves. And when he leaves the Marines, he's going to get his associates degree in business from Joliet Junior College, become a professional boxer and manage his own fights.
Twenty minutes late, his friend finally arrives.
The Marines, Boxer explains as the bag flies from his fist, "it's the toughest, the hardest. I'm not going to take the easy way."
But bootcamp, he says, readjusting the tape on his wrists before throwing another round of punches, "it'll be a piece of cake."
May 21: Recruit training
Thirteen days to go
Staff Sgt. Anthony Rubio studies the summer crop of Marine recruits as two dozen teens chase a soccer ball in a game with no goalies.
They don't know yet how tough boot camp will be, Rubio says. They'll miss having girls around, and spend the first few weeks in shock as stress and discipline replace their teenage world.
Nacho, he predicts, will struggle mentally, though he's physically strong. Boxer is mentally tough but not very big. And Max, he guesses, will struggle a little bit in both areas.
But in the almost 18 months Rubio's worked in the Aurora office, just three of his 71 recruits have failed boot camp. So Boxer, Max and Nacho -- among the only recruits with ROTC training -- will do just fine.
The three had first approached the 26-year-old recruiter when Rubio was passing out pamphlets in the East High lunchroom. The summer after their sophomore year, Rubio served as a drill instructor during a mini boot camp for high schoolers, and Boxer wound up in his platoon. The two became close, as Rubio shared stories from his Marine experience. Soon Boxer "was sold," Rubio says.
By their junior year, Boxer had referred Max and Nacho to Rubio, who interviewed them on how strongly they value Marine traits, like courage, self-reliance, challenge, leadership, travel and adventure.
"We sell the intangibles," Rubio says. "A lot of times I tell my recruits, 'Don't join the Marine Corps for a job. Join because you want to be a Marine.'"
The Marines have few problems finding new recruits -- the local office ships them out every week in June, July and August, between 38 and 50 each summer. Nationwide, the Marine Corps runs two full boot camps of seven companies, which each contain anywhere from 480 to 600 recruits.
The trouble, Rubio says, is keeping them in the service. Retention rates are dropping, and many simply don't know what they're getting into. "Surprisingly the war doesn't seem to come up (in conversations with recruits)," Rubio says, before adding a quick afterthought.
"Well, with the parents it does."
May 25: Graduation Day
Nine days to go
Nacho smiles and holds up nine fingers as he files onto East High's football field with the line of teens in black caps and gowns. It's graduation day, but his excitement isn't about the culmination. He's anticipating a beginning.
"Nine days," he mouths.
Standing inside his open garage, Ignacio Galindo, Sr. counts down, too. "Eleven years," he calculates slowly, looking down at a framed photograph of 7-year-old Nacho, grinning a toothy smile. He flicks at a cigarette, then swipes the heal of a palm across his eyes.
"I'm so proud of my son," he repeats several times.
A single father who tackles his taller teenage son with bear hugs, Galindo moved them into his mother's home several years ago. Swinging her feet lightly from a chair in the garage, Nacho's grandmother, Eusenia Galindo, says she's watched out for him, cooking dinners and checking report cards, especially when his were on the brink of failing this semester.
"I was praying to God he wouldn't graduate," she says, unashamed she'd take any excuse to keep him at home.
As the ceremony starts, Nacho's father arrives alone and stands to the side of the bleachers. He leans up against the rails and watches the field without expression.
Valedictorian Elizabeth Gerhard steps up to make a speech: "I think there is a little fear in each of us," she says. "(But) the time has come for us to walk across the stage and receive our diplomas ...
The time has come for us to be the future."
The students file into line as an announcer calls out their names:
"...Max Escutia."
"...Ignacio Nick Galindo."
"...Joseph Salgado."
One by one, the three stride across the stage, heads up, all smiles and confidence.
If any fear remained, they weren't letting on.
June 1: Goodbye Party
Two days to go
Money is tight, but Eusenia Galindo isn't about to let her grandson leave without a party. So she and Nacho's aunts, uncles and cousins scurry around the backyard on a windy Friday afternoon, tying together American flag balloons and banners; taping down red, white and blue tablecloths.
"All we need now is Uncle Sam standing in the corner," Eusenia says happily.
Earlier that afternoon, at a separate patriotic display, East High had held a tribute for the school's three Marines killed in Iraq. Speaking during a dedication to the three men's tearful mothers, Fox Valley Marine Corps Commandant Michael Rankin paraphrased Ronald Reagan: "Some men it takes a whole lifetime to know if they make a difference.
"The Marines don't have a problem," he said. "We know."
Behind all the talk of bravado and adventure, Nacho also seems concerned with finding a purpose, however undefined. An easygoing teen who shares his father's goofy sense of humor, he once dreamed of becoming a cop. Now he plans to spend at least 20 years in the Marine Corps, one day taking on an officer position.
This new path, he shrugs, is not so different. "A protector," he labels both.
The Galindo guests, mostly more extended family, arrive over the next few hours, filling the backyard with giddy children and cheery chatter. Sitting in the kitchen that evening, away from the guests, Nacho says he'll miss them all "just a little bit." But he's too anxious to leave.
"I just hope there's a lot of action," he says.
Overhearing his son from the other room, Galindo calls out:
"I'm hoping he don't get to see no action."
June 3: D-Day
Minutes before 6 p.m., the time Staff Sgt. Rubio is scheduled to pick up Boxer, his mother sits silently at the end of a couch in their living room. In the corner, slightly-deflated balloons call out: "Congrats, grad!" and "You'll be missed!" A blow-up camouflage gun dangles off a nearby love seat.
Elizabeth Cervantes looks up as her oldest son walks down the stairs, one arm around his 7-year-old sister.
"I don't think you can ever be ready," Cervantes says, leaving it unclear whether she's referring to herself or her son.
The family gathers in the living room, saying few words to each other. Boxer clutches a notebook filled with letters he's written to his girlfriend.
"I'm going to miss my girlfriend," he says, before catching his mom's gaze across the room. "But I'm going to miss my mom more."
She smiles back at him, sweetly and sadly, a hand hiding most of her mouth.
Rubio pulls into their driveway at 6:12, and then stands stoically in the doorway. He never knows what to expect when he picks up recruits from their home. Sometimes he spends an hour there, with tearful families full of questions. Sometimes, the young men and women are standing alone at the door, ready to go.
At Boxer's house, Cervantes meets his eyes. "Are you ready to take my kid?" she asks him.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Shame on you."
Boxer hugs his mom, burying his head in her neck, and whispers "I love you" into her ear.
He kisses his sister, hugs his step-dad, demands a better hug from his brother. He returns to Cervantes, kisses her four times, and whispers "I'll be back, Mom."
Then, Boxer turns and walks out the door. The message on the back of his gray Marines T-shirt reads: "Pain is weakness."
With Boxer in the car, Rubio drives to Nacho's home, where more than a dozen extended family members have gathered on the driveway for group hugs, photographs and chain reactions of tears and laughs.
Galindo grabs his son and cries shamelessly into his shoulder. "I'm gonna miss you like crazy," he says, before giving him a shove. "Go!"
At about 7:40 p.m., Max's father looks out the window. Rubio's car pulls up for the last stop, and Escutia sighs.
"That's not a good sight for me," he says.
They say their good-byes calmly on the front porch, as Rubio explains how to book a hotel in San Diego for the boot camp graduation. Then Max turns and walks away. In a few minutes, Escutia and his wife will remain on the front lawn, silent as they watch Rubio's car drive off.
In a few hours, the three will spend the night at a Radisson Hotel in Des Plaines, where they'll receive a 4 a.m. wake-up call. Then they'll fill out paperwork, undergo a physical and pick up their plane tickets to San Diego.
In one week and six days, Elizabeth Cervantes will receive her first letter from Boxer, telling her that the food is terrible and his body aches.
And if all goes according to plan, the three will graduate from boot camp in 13 weeks, return home for 10 days, and ship out again, this time as real Marines.
But right now, Max turns and smiles -- for a few seconds longer, just a teen with no ranks, no fears, no knowledge yet of real combat.
"I'll see you guys soon," he says.
Ellie