Jose Perez remembered

ONTARIO -- Jose Roberto Perez wanted to eat Mexican food until his belt busted.

He wanted to remarry his young wife, Violeta, this time in the church. He wanted to play with his kids.

He wanted to come home.

Jose comes home tonight. He'll arrive at Ontario International Airport sometime around 7 p.m., in a box draped with an American flag.

On Friday, his family will bury him.

Jose was 21, an Army specialist on his second visit to Iraq.

He was standing on a tank the afternoon of Oct. 18, says cousin Adriana Rodriguez. He was in Ramadi, it was a few minutes after 3 p.m. Iraqi time, and somebody shot him.

Amazing is the word Rodriguez chooses to describe her cousin.

Always caring. Always with his family.

Jose was the second oldest of four children, a Chaffey High School grad. He married at 18.

He has a 3-year-old son. His daughter had her first birthday two days after he died.

Joining the Army was something he just wanted to do. But when he talked to an aunt two days before he was shot, Jose said he was ready to come home.

Jose was home for his daughter's baptism. The Fourth of July weekend was the last time Rodriguez saw her cousin.

"The whole weekend he wanted to be with his family," she says. "He didn't want to do anything else."

There will be a visitation for Jose from 5 to 9 p.m. Thursday at Draper Mortuary, 811 N. Mountain Ave., Ontario. From what his family has been told, it will be an open casket.

They'll gather Friday morning at St. George Catholic Church, 505 N. Palm Ave., Ontario, and bury Jose at nearby Bellevue Memorial Park.

Sometime after noon, a soldier in full dress uniform will hand the family a neatly folded American flag. And then they'll go home.

From the Daily Bulletin

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