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Ramiro Gonzalez sat on the porch of his house with a faraway stare at the two flags he raised in his front yard on the West Side of San Antonio. To his right flew the U.S. flag; to his left, the flag of Mexico.

I stood on the sidewalk between the two flags, studying the crevices in the thin face of Gonzalez whose 26-year-old son, Rodrigo, was the first San Antonio soldier to die in the run-up to the war in Iraq, and wondered: What is July 4th — or any other day — like for this family whose son died early in a war that many of us now believe is a mistake?

Inside the house it’s clear how Gonzalez and his wife, Orelia, have chosen to live with that question: with reverence. The walls of the living room are covered with photographs of Rodrigo, who loved racing video games, NASCAR, and the United States Army. On top of the television set is a shrine: the U.S. flag that draped his casket, burgundy berets, a stack of albums of newspaper clippings and letters.

Day in and day out, the Gonzalez family — the parents, Rodrigo’s twin brother Ricardo, his two other brothers, Ramiro and Rolando (all three currently serving in the Army) and his sister, Veronica — rub against two difficult public issues in a raw and personal way. There’s the war, of course, not a political question to them of just or unjust, but an open wound. Then, there’s the increasingly contentious issue of immigration.

In my fantasy, I’d like to bring Lou Dobbs, the CNN gasbag who demonizes Mexican immigrants, to this house. At this moment, about 70,000 foreign-born men and women serve in the U.S. armed forces. Four of those grew up in the Gonzalez household. Think about that: one San Antonio family, all legal residents of the United States from Mexico, gave all four of their sons to the U.S. Army. If there were a vote taken for American patriotism, by any measure, the Gonzalez family would win hands-down not because of their easy opinions but because of what they have borne.

Rodrgio’s mother, Orelia, remembers the night in February 2006 when two soldiers came to the front door to give her the news. Her husband, Ramiro, who drives a truck for a produce company, was out of town. Neither of the soldiers spoke Spanish and Orelia, alone at home, was confused and frightened. Eventually, Veronica, her daughter, arrived to translate but by then Mrs. Gonzalez didn’t need words to know her son was dead.

It happened at 12:30 a.m. on Feb. 25, 2006, when Rodrigo and three other soldiers of the 158th Aviation Regiment lifted off the desert floor near Kuwait City in a Black Hawk helicopter on a training mission. Moments later, the helicopter was engulfed in a sandstorm and slammed to the ground. All four soldiers on board were killed.

To Veronica, her brother is a hero, plain and simple. The eldest son, Ramiro, an Army recruiter in Laredo who signed up Rodrigo as well as Ricardo, who recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq, deals with his loss like the professional soldiers he is. “When you stand up and take the oath, you don’t just do your duty whenever you feel like it. You do it every time,” said Ramiro. “Our family is really proud of what Rodrigo did.”

His father Ramiro is equally proud of Rodrigo. Yet when I asked him how he feels about the war, his chin dropped with a thud to his chest and he said in Spanish, “This war was something that never should have happened.”

Before his helicopter went down, Rodrigo filled out paperwork for becoming a U.S. citizen. After his death, his parents were presented with a certificate making him an “honorary citizen” of the United States, a reminder that often it is immigrants who work hardest for the American dream and who pay the highest price for it.

Even and perhaps especially for those who believe that the war in Iraq should end now, the Gonzalez family offers an example of how to honor those who have died there. The answer is: with reverence, not rhetoric.

janjarboerussell@aol.com