A small town grieves over one family's loss in Iraq

By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter

WAPATO, Yakima County — One week ago, Gloria Reynoso awoke to an uneasy feeling that she could not shake. Somewhere, something was not right.

That evening, three Marines — in full uniform — knocked on her door, asking to speak with her and her husband, who works the late shift at a local processing plant.

"I didn't have to wait for them to speak. My heart already felt something, as a mother," she said yesterday.

The Reynosos' oldest son — 27-year-old Marine Sgt. Yadir Reynoso — had been killed, shot in the face during the fighting in Najaf, Iraq. He is the 23rd service member from Washington to die in the war, many of whom came from small towns such as Arlington, Concrete, Sedro-Woolley and Prosser, where patriotism is often strong and job opportunities scarce.

Wapato, a town of some 4,600 people, is more than 77 percent Mexican American. The grieving here is born of pride in the community and its heritage. Street-front signs mourning the Reynosos' loss are posted at a bakery, a construction company and market. Tomorrow, mourners will file into the local high-school gym to pay their respects to his flag-draped coffin before an evening memorial service. His burial is scheduled for Saturday.

Many of Wapato's residents were drawn to the area for its farm jobs. Gloria and Jose Reynoso, Mexican nationals, arrived in 1982 from Stockton, Calif.

More than two decades of toiling in asparagus fields, fruit orchards, packing warehouses and processing plants have brought them a modest piece of the American dream. They own their own home, a wood-frame house bought in 1986 for less than $9,000 and painstakingly fixed up over the years. And their four children — all born in the U.S. — made it through high school and found lives beyond the fields.

For motivation, Jose Reynoso took Yadir, then 6, into the asparagus fields along with his younger sister Patty to work.

"He wanted us to experience what his life was like, so we would go to school," recalls Patty Reynoso, now an accounts representative at Yakima Valley Radiology.

The last week has been awash in condolences, including a phone call yesterday from the Seattle-based Mexican consul, Jorge Madrazo-Cuellar.

They also negotiated — with the aid of U.S. Sen. Patty Murray — to join the Marine escort that accompanied their son's body across the mountains from Seattle to Wapato.

Their son, they say, was a lean, handsome man and a father of five. Just recently Reynoso, who was divorced from his wife, Lisa, spoke of getting out of the Marines to spend more time with his family.

Yesterday, the family opened their home to reporters from The Seattle Times and the Yakima Herald-Republic.

On the chain-link fence outside their home hang four red-white-and-blue American pennants, and another four are tacked to the front porch, along with a black ribbon with Yadir's picture over the door.

Inside, pictures of the Virgin Mary and religious scrolls are outnumbered by pictures in a new shrine to honor their lost son. A picture of the 130-pound Yadir as a youthful high-school wrestler is positioned across from a sober-faced Yadir in Marine uniform.

The family recalled Yadir as a gentle, kind man who would take money out of his pocket to pay the grocery bills of a stranger at the checkout counter.

He loved coming home to Wapato, as well as taking fellow Marines on south-of-the-border visits to Tijuana, where his grandmother lives. Though his body was amply covered with tattoos, he promised his grandmother that he would save a special place over his heart for a tattoo to honor her. He sent her flowers just before he was sent to Iraq in May, his family recalls.

As a boy, helping his father work on the house, Yadir Reynoso once spoke of being an electrician. But his dreams changed.

Jose Reynoso, his voice breaking with emotion, recalled how his son came home from high school one day to pore through a Marine recruiting brochure.

"He said, 'Is it OK if I join them Marines?' I responded that it was his decision. If that's what he wanted to do, I would support that decision. If that was the career he wanted," Jose Reynoso said in an interview translated by his daughter, Patty.

His son enlisted in 1997. Later, a proud Yadir came home from boot camp in uniform. "He said, 'I know that I am a man now — I am respected the way I always felt I wanted to be respected,' " his mother said. Yadir Reynoso was part of a wave of Latino enlistment that has favored the Marines, which prepare troops for some of the toughest U.S. combat missions. Within the ranks of the Marines, Latinos have suffered more than 18 percent of the war dead in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a Department of Defense analysis from late July. That is higher than the 11.5 percent casualty rates of Latinos in all branches of service in the two wars. In the U.S., Latinos account for about 14 percent of the population.

Reynoso ended up with the Battalion Landing Team 1/4, 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, I Marine Expeditionary Force, based in Camp Pendleton, Calif.

The family said he got an early taste of the carnage of war when he was asked to help retrieve the bodies of U.S. sailors killed when the USS Cole was attacked by terrorists in Aden, Yemen, in 2000.

Reynoso was deeply disturbed by what he saw, and he told his family he didn't want to die that way. His family now struggles to come to terms with his combat death.

Patty Reynoso recalls how she came to visit her parents last Thursday and was full of anger and grief upon learning of her brother's death.