Missing soldiers' kin unite in shared grief
LAWRENCE -- The mother of Army Specialist Alex R. Jimenez stopped in front of a poster depicting her son and Private Byron W. Fouty, both missing in Iraq since May 12. She kissed her fingertips and pressed them against her son's lips. Without a word, Fouty's stepfather walked over and embraced her.
Jimenez's and Fouty's parents met yesterday for the first time since their sons' unit was ambushed about 20 miles outside Bagh dad. They spent the day at a windswept stadium in Lawrence, Jimenez's hometown, sharing their sorrows and hopes and assembling care packages for the American troops in Iraq who are searching for the two soldiers.
"I feel stronger together," said Ramon "Andy" Jimenez, Alex's father, who lives in Lawrence. Then he turned to Fouty's stepfather, Gordy Dibler, and said, in Spanish: "You have something that has given me comfort."
"I have what you have," Dibler replied in English. "I have a heart."
In the 10 weeks since the ambush, coalition troops have recovered Jimenez's and Fouty's ID cards, a group linked to Al Qaeda has boasted in a video that it has executed the soldiers, and the body of the third soldier kidnapped in the ambush was found in the Euphrates River.
But the families of Jimenez and Fouty hope that the soldiers are still alive, and US search teams are combing vast swaths of Iraqi farmland near the area where the two men were abducted.
Yesterday, Ramon Jimenez, Maria Duran, Jimenez's mother, and Dibler, who flew in from Oxford, Mich., joined about two dozen volunteers at Veterans Memorial Stadium to wrap and mail more than 6 tons of donations to the troops who are searching for the soldiers.
Duran, who lives in Queens, N.Y., put together a pair of socks, a red bandanna, a picture of Jesus, a romance novel by Karen Ranney, a camouflage throw, and several rolls of toilet paper. She slipped the items into a brown paper bag with practiced ease.
"I sent these to Alex! I know," she explained.
The care packages will boost the morale of thousands of American troops in Iraq, said Francisco Urena, director of veterans services in Lawrence and a former Marine who spent several months in the Iraqi desert in 2005. Receiving such snippets of home "felt to each and every one of us like Christmas," he recalled.
At least one Massachusetts soldier has been killed while looking for Jimenez, 25, and Fouty, 19, of Waterford, Mich. Private First Class Matthew Bean, 22, a Pembroke native and a member of the 10th Mountain Division, was killed May 19, a week after the search began.
Dibler and Ramon Jimenez also put some food and hygiene products in two brown paper bags. But then the men stopped, and, surrounded by piles of food and clothes, draped their arms around each other, speaking softly.
"There is not much time together," Dibler said. "We're trying to soak in as much as we can."
The event is "really just to bring the families together," said Jim Wareing, founder of New England Caring for our Military, the Methuen charity group that organized the drive.
Jimenez and Duran, who are separated, and Dibler, who raised Fouty and is separated from the soldier's mother, spent yesterday morning showing family pictures and exchanging memories of their sons, "talking family," Duran said. Dibler told Duran that he has hardly been able to sleep since his son was kidnapped.
Jimenez and Dibler exchanged few words, usually with the help of a translator, but often embraced in silence.
"Sharing the same sorrow with someone makes you feel closer," Dibler said.
"We plan to meet in the near future to rejoice on [our sons'] return to us," Jimenez added.
