Final Salute To Hero

It was not the hero’s homecoming his family prayed for, but Sergeant Alex Jimenez certainly received a hero’s farewell from his relatives and the community that loved him.
On Saturday, August 2, friends, military colleagues and loved ones filled a packed Our Lady of Sorrows Church, just blocks from his family’s Corona home, to pay tribute to Jimenez, whose remains were discovered last month in Iraq after he and a fellow soldier had gone missing 14 months earlier.
“I’m very said for the loss of my son, but I feel grateful for all the support, especially from the Army,” said Alex’s mother, Maria del Rosario Duran, who spent many nights in her modest Corona home saying the rosary and praying for her son’s safe return.
Alex Jimenez was born in Flushing, and lived in Corona and Lawrence, MA, for much of his childhood before he moved to the Dominican Republic where his mother’s family lived.
After graduating high school there, Alex Jimenez sent a letter to a U.S. Army recruiter expressing his interest in joining the Army after he turned 18, and one of Alex’s cousins read the letter during the funeral mass.
“If I ever do get recruited, I promise to fight for the innocent who cannot fight for themselves and for the United States of America,” Alex wrote.
Jimenez was assigned to the D (Delta) Company, 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division based out of Fort Drum, NY.
Jimenez, along with Private First Class Byron Fouty of Michigan, had been missing since May 12, 2007, when an insurgency ambush killed five members of their unit and sparked a massive manhunt for Jimenez and Fouty. However, as the military continued to search for the two, their official status was missing in action or captured, until last week.
Many of their family members, including Alex’s father Ramon Jimenez, who family and friends call Andy, took part in a mass in Duran’s house on May 12, 2008 - one year after Alex went missing. Duran and Alex’s father are separated, and Ramon still lives in Lawrence, where a service was held the weekend before to honor Alex.
“I just ask God to give me strength to continue my life without him,” Alex’s father Ramon said during the funeral mass. “Since he left for the war, I couldn’t stop crying. There are no words more to say to each one of you…Thanks for your support all this time.”
Two days before Alex’s funeral, family and friends held a procession through the streets of his Corona neighborhood to pay tribute to their hero.
In addition, City Councilmember Hiram Monserrate, who has been a longtime friend of the family, has already submitted a bill in the Council to have the two street corners of Jimenez’s block named in his honor. Monserrate said that action would take place before the end of the year.