Fallen LI soldier honored with memorial
BY DANIEL MASSEY - October 21, 2007
A black cloth was pulled back, unveiling a granite stone lodged into a tree trunk that showed Spc. Daniel Fuentes' smiling face.
Standing behind the trunk was a memorial of another kind, wrapped in a light blue blanket and cradled in his mother's arms. Daniel Jonathan Fuentes, 1 month and 10 days old, slept as family and friends gathered Saturday to remember his father, who was killed by an improvised bomb in Baghdad in April.
"He mentioned that if anything was to happen to him, at least we would have a little seed, a little part of him," said Nancy Fuentes, Fuentes' mother. "He had that in his mind. He wanted to leave something behind."
The dozens who gathered on the Fuentes' front lawn in Levittown were eager to get a look at the stone, which was embedded into the trunk of a tree that had died and had to be cut down. Fuentes used to do pull-ups from a branch, giving his uncle, Hector Lenis, the idea to turn the tree into a memorial.
Workers from Carpenter's Union Local 7 helped set the granite into the trunk. On the stone are two images of Fuentes and the stars of the American flag.
"Spc. Daniel Fuentes, July 27, 1987-April 6, 2007," it reads. "Forever Young. If tears could build a stairway and memories a lane, we'd walk right up to heaven and bring you home again."
But the crowd on the Fuentes lawn was just as keen to lay their eyes on Daniel Jonathan. They examined his brown hair and chunky cheeks and compared him to baby pictures of his father.
"When I look at him I see Danny," said Nancy Fuentes. "It's bittersweet."
Armando Fuentes, the soldier's father, said taking care of baby Danny and Fuentes' brother and sister keeps him going.
"It hasn't been easy and it's not going to change," he said. "There's no day that we don't think about him."
Fuentes'
fiancée, Emma McGarry, 21, said she has a hard time calling the baby Danny and instead uses his middle name.
"I'm happy I have him because it's a part of Danny," she said. "But I miss him. It's going to be hard when I have to tell him about his father."
