• Home
• Legislative Action
• Public Relations
• Commanders Corner
• Legion Home

Photo by Chris Jewett

From the day their son arrived in Iraq, Tony and Amy Galvez could tell you what time it was over there, whatever the hour. “I would wake up at 4 o’clock in the morning and know it was 2 in the afternoon,” Amy says. “It was my deployment, too.”

Marine Cpl. Adam Galvez, 21, served with the 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion out of Twentynine Palms, Calif., conducting combat operations in the Al Anbar province. On July 29, a roof fell in on him when a suicide bomber detonated a truck full of explosives outside a building in Rawah. Galvez dug his way out of the rubble, allowing himself to be medically evacuated for an injured ankle only after he had helped free other Marines.

“That was the most peaceful time I had, because I knew he was safe then,” Amy says of Adam’s brief hospital stay. Offered an opportunity to return to the United States, Galvez decided to stay with Delta Company. With only a month left in his tour, having survived a building collapse, the worst seemed to be behind him. “Once you feel they’ve dodged that bullet, so to speak, you think you’re home free,” his mother says.

Still, every time Amy Galvez heard a car door shut outside their Salt Lake City home, she couldn’t help but wonder if this might be it – the visit feared by every U.S. military parent, the one that begins with the words, “I’m sorry.” When that moment arrived, last Aug. 20, Amy was at the computer, sending out e-mails to pull together a rally the next week. Antiwar activists had planned to protest outside The American Legion’s 88th National Convention downtown, where President Bush was scheduled to speak, and she wanted just as many or more people there to counter them by showing support for the troops. Hearing a noise out front, she looked through the blinds to see two Marines coming up the walk.

Earlier that day, Adam and two other members of his battalion were killed when their vehicle rolled over a pressure-sensitive explosive device, they told Amy. She recalls feeling disbelief first, then shock. How could it be? It didn’t make sense. She’d talked to Adam less than 24 hours earlier. Suddenly, unexpectedly, a war that had claimed the lives of nearly 2,600 U.S. servicemembers at that point had claimed one more. Her son wouldn’t be coming home alive.

Nine months later, the pain remains, but Tony and Amy Galvez refuse to retreat from their support of the war and the U.S. military fighting it. Even as the media offer a platform to Cindy Sheehan and other grieving parents opposed to the war, they want Americans to understand that they, too, have a message: their son did not die in vain. Cpl. Adam Galvez and thousands like him gave their lives for their country, and for a free Iraq.

Power of Words. Tony didn’t see the Marines’ car as he approached the house that day. At Amy’s request, they had driven up the street, out of sight, so she could tell her husband herself. “It was like somebody hit me with a two-by-four,” Tony says. First came anger, then denial. Not Adam. “In half an hour I went through all the stages of grief, I think. I describe it as being like a tidal wave, a tsunami, just knocking you down and throwing you around. You get up and go, ‘Whoa, what was that?’ Then the next wave comes and hits you, and you go, ‘OK, that one wasn’t quite as bad,’ and the next wave’s a little less. But then the big wave comes again and you think, ‘Where’d that come from? I thought I was done.’”

The timing was unbelievable. Even as the Galvez family mourned, Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson announced he’d appear with Sheehan at an antiwar rally scheduled for Aug. 30 – the day of Adam’s burial. (Sheehan ended up cancelling.) Then, to make things worse, the infamous Westboro Baptist Church of Kansas issued a press release saying its members planned to picket Adam’s service. Criticized for crashing military funerals with signs proclaiming that dead U.S. soldiers are God’s judgment on America for homosexuality, the church said Galvez died “in shame,” and declared, “Thank God for IEDs,” or improvised explosive devices.

The Westboro group never showed, but 130 Patriot Guard riders did, along with Utah’s governor, two senators, three city police departments and dozens of Marines. “Your son will be remembered as a hero,” Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. assured Tony and Amy at the service. “You should be very, very proud.”

The American Legion also came to the couple’s defense. Two hours before Anderson blasted President Bush at his rally, calling the U.S. invasion “illegal and immoral,” then-National Commander Thomas L. Bock read a statement from Tony and Amy Galvez to a crowd of thousands outside the Salt Palace Convention Center.

“While our forefathers gave us the right and privilege to challenge our leaders, the manner and method that some people have chosen to use at this time only emboldens the enemy,” they wrote. “All Americans and political officials must carefully consider their words and actions, for they can, in fact, increase the danger to our troops and adversely impact their efforts.”

Their feelings haven’t changed. “People may not agree with the reason we went to war, but while our troops are over there, we can’t be telling the world that what they are doing is wrong,” Amy says. “If we say we support them, we have to support what they’re doing.”

In a recent letter to The Salt Lake Tribune, Amy took the city’s mayor to the woodshed, accusing him of undermining the mission of U.S. troops. “If you didn’t know the difference, one might think by listening to Rocky Anderson it was President Bush setting those improvised explosive devices,” she wrote, pointing out that the day she buried her son, Anderson missed an opportunity to pay his respects and instead belittled the job Adam and his fellow Marines did by slandering their commander in chief.

“Are more servicemen and women returning the way my son did, in a casket, as a result of our words and actions? I believe the answer is yes,” she continued. “The perception of a weak American military, should we lose, will make our enemy stronger than we ever imagined. Because we don’t want to be at war anymore doesn’t mean the war is over.”

“We Need to Be Here.” Brett Allred and his wife, Zell, also support Bush’s decision to send U.S. troops to Iraq in 2003. Like the Galvez family, they have paid a great personal price, losing their son, Marine Lance Cpl. Michael Allred, 22, in a suicide bombing near Fallujah three years ago. Even so, they reject any talk of withdrawing our forces before the country is stabilized.

“One of the last things he told us was, ‘We need to be here, but it’s going to be hard, and it’s going to be a long time,’” recalls Allred, who grew up in the Middle East. His father worked in the oil fields of Somalia, then Libya. After the 1969 military coup that put Muammar Qadhafi in power, conditions began to deteriorate, and they returned to the United States. Living among Muslims convinced Allred that the region’s peoples do not want to be ruled by tyrants. “They want freedom, like you and I,” he says.

During World War II, military experts estimated that an Iwo Jima invasion would last a week and cost a few hundred American lives, Allred points out. Six weeks and 7,000 losses later, U.S. forces captured the island on their way to victory in the Pacific. Where is the public’s patience and determination to win an equally crucial battle against America-hating terrorists in Iraq? “We shouldn’t quit just because it’s not looking good right now,” he says.

Allred tends to question opinion polls claiming the majority of Americans want a pullout. He hopes they don’t. And he says the soldiers and Marines he’s met agree with him. “They don’t think a person can support the troops but not the mission,” he says. “The troops are the mission. It’s like saying you support your college basketball team but don’t want them to play because somebody might sprain his ankle.”

When the Allreds heard about Galvez’s death, they traveled 90 miles from their home in Hyde Park, Utah, to visit his parents in Salt Lake City. Their mutual losses, and their strong support of the Iraq war, have helped forge a bond between them and other Gold Star parents across the state, including Colleen Parkin of West Valley City.

Parkin’s son, Marine Cpl. Matthew Smith, 24, died in a helicopter crash near Rutbah, Iraq, on Jan. 26, 2005. Thirty Marines and one sailor were killed, making it one of the single worst incidents in terms of U.S. casualties since the war began.

“He always wanted to be in the military,” Parkin says of her son, who at 8 years old sketched pictures of Marine helicopters eerily similar to the CH-53E in which he was killed. “He’d say, ‘Mom, I want to protect you and my country.’ He knew he was doing the right thing when he went to Iraq. So I really want us to finish what we started over there. That’s what he would have wanted.”

On a trip to Washington, Parkin found herself defending her views when a war protester confronted her in an elevator. “Obviously, you don’t know the whole story,” she told the woman, who listened as Parkin described how U.S. actions have improved the lives of Iraq’s women and children – and how her son, Matthew, knew the risks when he enlisted after 9/11 and volunteered anyway.

“When I said I believe in the war, she just jumped all over me, but it turned out she knew no one who has served or died,” Parkin says. “I would hope people would ask some of us parents how we feel. There are more of us than there are Sheehans.”

New Meaning. One of the hardest days for military parents who have lost a son or daughter in war is the day that soldier’s or Marine’s unit returns home. Tony and Amy Galvez knew a month before Marines of the 3rd LAR walked off the bus that Adam wouldn’t be among them. Nothing can make up for that, but on Feb. 1, Adam’s Corps buddies gave his parents the closest thing they could to a homecoming when they chartered a bus from Twentynine Palms, Calif., to be at the unveiling of Adam Galvez Street in Salt Lake City.

As the group of 50 Marines got off the bus, “I was in heaven,” Amy says. “They all knew Adam, and over dinner they told us stories about him, many of which we’d never heard. It was beyond anything we thought it would be.” They talked about how he had loved to snowboard, play baseball and fix cars. He also loved his family. “There was no question there,” she adds. “We knew. What struck me was that his friends knew, too, how much he loved us.”

The next day, street signs bearing the fallen Marine’s name went up along a stretch of 300 South between Interstate 15 and Redwood Road in Salt Lake City.

The idea to rename the street came from a Boy Scout. During a ceremony at a nearby elementary school, Junior Cruz, 15, told a crowded gymnasium that he decided to pursue naming a street for Adam Galvez as an Eagle Scout project. If streets could be named for Utah Jazz basketball players, he figured, why not a Marine?

The Poplar Grove community and the Salt Lake City Council agreed, unanimously, and Boy Scout Troop 987 raised $2,000 to replace 20 street signs.

The Galvezes have heard that Rocky Anderson opposed the sign, or at least wanted “300 South” to overshadow their son’s name. They aren’t sure about that, but they do know the mayor has never expressed his condolences about their loss, nor did he attend the street-naming ceremony. Lately, he’s been calling for President Bush’s impeachment, which they take quite personally. “I’m not accusing anyone of causing my son’s death, but the antiwar crowd is shifting momentum from the U.S. military to the enemy,” Amy says. “We’ve got to support the troops and the mission. The two are dependent on each other.”

As Memorial Day approaches, the Galvez family plans to attend a remembrance in Washington, where they hope to meet with other families of America’s war dead, including the young men who died beside their son. They’ll also visit Arlington National Cemetery. “The day has a different meaning for us now,” Amy says. “I imagine it will be very hard, though it won’t be harder than what we’ve already gone through.”

In her view, their grief isn’t as difficult as what lies ahead for soldiers and Marines coming back from battle with severe injuries and psychological trauma. For their sake, and for those who have made the supreme sacrifice in this war, the United States must prevail in Iraq. “I told President Bush last summer that the biggest insult anyone could hand me would be to pull the troops out before the job is complete,” she says. “If we’re going to quit, at that point I’ll have to ask, ‘Why did my son die?’”