Based: Fullerton
1st Battalion, 184th Infantry Regiment, 40th Infantry Division
Supporting: Operation Iraqi Freedom
Died: December 31, 2005
Baghdad (southern part), Iraq
Engaged
Gender: Male
Hometown: La Puente
High School: Bassett Senior High (La Puente)
Burial: Forest Lawn Memorial-Park, Covina Hills
On both tours of Iraq, he spared loved ones the details of the violence he witnessed in war. Once, he woke up his mother with a phone call at 2:30 a.m. He sounded distraught, and she still wonders why. He asked her to sing him a lullaby -- "Lu, Lu, Lu" -- that she had sung to him when he was a boy. She did.Do read the whole LA Times article about Army National Guard Sergeant Marcelino Ronald Corniel here and find more here, here and here and previously on Boom3 here.
At her son's coffin at a viewing Thursday, she sang it to him again. "I'm sure there were tears on the flag, but I didn't care," she said.
One consolation for Lopez is that her son fell in love with Calderon, a makeup artist from Bellflower. "He learned to love a woman, and to be loved back," Lopez said.
The day before he died, his mother recalled, Corniel told his fiancee in an e-mail: "24 more days until the happiest day of my life."
"Why him?" his mother asked, "when he was so needed -- not by his country, but by us."
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