Based: Baumholder, Germany
1st Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division
Supporting: Operation Iraqi Freedom
Died: December 28, 2008
Sadr City, Iraq
Single
Gender: Male
Hometown: Newman
High School: Freedom Alternative High (Turlock)
Burial: San Joaquin Valley National Cemetery, Santa Nella, Calif.
On the night of Dec. 28, Tony Gonzales sat down at his home computer in Newman, Calif. to write his only son an e-mail. TJ was serving his first tour of duty in Iraq, and his father wanted to tell him that their beloved Dallas Cowboys had just lost a game."Read the entire LA Times article about Army Specialist Tony J. Gonzales here, and find more here and here and visit Specialist Gonzales' Guest Book here.
There was a knock at the door. Two Army officers stood there, under the porch light.
"I could see the uniforms and the medals," Gonzales said. "I wanted to barricade the door. I just said to myself, 'No, no, no, it can't be.' "
The officers had come to tell Gonzales and his wife, Marlynn, that their son, Spc. Tony J. Gonzales, 20, had been killed earlier that day in Sadr City, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
TJ was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 1st Armored Division. He was the youngest of the couple's four children and, according to his father, "the son that every man would want."
"We'd wrestle, we'd play football, we'd play army. We used to love to watch the Three Stooges," Gonzales said. "He wanted to follow exactly in my footsteps, and that made me so proud.
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