Former UT student returns to see honor in Hero Street memorial

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By Barb Ickes | Sunday, August 3, 2008 12:04 AM CDT | () comments

Army soldier Juan Aguilera, home on leave from Iraq, leans against one of the walls at the Hero Street Monument he helped construct when he was younger. (John Schultz/QUAD-CITY TIMES) Buy this Photo

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SILVIS, Ill. — It’s not as if Juan Aguilera started with nothing.

He “got” it, even as a teenager.

At 16, one of his former art teachers nominated him for what he knew was an honor: to be one of six Quad-City students to help sculpt the Hero Street Monument.

It was a big deal. It wasn’t a huge deal.

“Somebody came in and sat us down and gave us the story of Hero Street,” Aguilera remembered last week. “I believe there was a slideshow and maybe a documentary. My parents told me more about it after that.”

The story has been told countless times and will be told countless more: Mexican immigrants came to little Silvis, Ill., to work for the railroad after World War I. They lived, many of them in boxcars at first, on a one-and-a-half-block dirt road called 2nd Street.

The couple dozen families gave endlessly to their new country in the most selfless way possible — with their children. By 1951, eight of their sons had died in World War II and Korea.

As of 1989, more than 110 men and women from the officially renamed Hero Street have served in the U.S. military.

“I definitely understood,” Aguilera said of the Hero Street story.

So, he and the other young artists took their new understanding, along with direction from a couple of professional artists, and sculpted the eagles onto the brick walls that mark the entrance to Hero Street.

And life went on.

Aguilera dropped out of United Township High School two years later and took a job at Tyson Foods in Joslin, Ill. The work at the animal-processing plant was hard and unsatisfying. After two years, and with his newly earned GED, he started to look around.

“I felt like I needed more,” he said.

On June 14, 2007, without even telling his girlfriend, he enlisted in the U.S. Army.

He had given some thought to the military before, largely because his grandfather and great grandfather were Army veterans. An added reason for signing up was that he didn’t have the money for the education he craved and knew the military could help.

Four months after enlisting, and on the day the Hero Street Monument was finally and officially dedicated, Aguilera was in basic training at Fort Sill, Okla.

The days in Army training crawled past, and the new soldier missed home. He hadn’t realized how close he is to his family and how much he would miss his hometown. He was assigned to the 69th Transportation Company and to six months at his first duty station in Germany.

“I was in Germany for all of five minutes before finding out we were being deployed to Iraq,” he said.

In May, Aguilera, now 22, was on his way to war. In Iraq, his unit would do more training while transporting fuel for generators to various missions.

“As far as the big picture goes over there, it’s not a very big deal,” he said, his dimples giving away his modesty. “It’s just my job, I guess. I’ve still got three years and some-odd weeks of Army to go.

“Friends are what get you through it.”

A little package from home doesn’t hurt, either, he said. For a Fourth of July talent-show takeoff of “American Idol,” Aguilera’s parents shipped him his guitar. He won the competition.

During an 18-day leave that began a week ago, the Carbon Cliff, Ill., native made it his mission to revisit Hero Street. As a young Mexican-American who now wears the uniform, he knew the monument would look different to him.

“Being Hispanic — and a soldier now, too — it seems even more important,” he said. “It hits me now, how significant it really is.

“It’s kind of sad how a lot of people, Hispanic people, especially, don’t know what Hero Street is about. They don’t see the sacrifice.”

Eager to educate, Aguilera began with his girlfriend, Jenna Kannenberg, 20.

“I’ve been away at school, and I never really stopped to look at Hero Street since the dedication,” she said. “He took me to it, and I really looked at it. Now it gives me goosebumps.”

It has a similar effect on the young man who helped give the eagles of Hero Street their wings and found his own.

Barb Brandt, the art teacher from the former Aldrin School who nominated him for the work on Hero Street, had lost track of her former student. When she learned Friday that he had joined the Army, was serving in Iraq and was eager to revisit Hero Street, she cried.

“Juan was a very gifted young man,” she remembered. “He was in his macabre period — like a lot of boys are at that age. At the unveiling of the walls, he came up to me and said, ‘I can’t believe you did this for me. I wasn’t a very good guy.’

“I told him the truth: ‘Juan, they asked me for a good artist.’ ”

As Brandt prepares for her final year of teaching, she said the news of Aguilera’s newfound maturity inspires her.

“It just took him a few years to realize and appreciate the meaning of Hero Street,” she said. “I knew he wouldn’t quite understand it when I nominated him, but I also believed that, one day, he would.

“It’s very satisfying to know that he has come full circle as a man.”

The young man finds satisfaction in it, too.

“I’m very close to my family, and I’ve always loved it in the Quad-Cities,” Aguilera said. “I take a lot of pride in it. I’d like to be a history teacher at UT (United Township High School, East Moline).

“I just registered for online classes I can take in Iraq. Whatever I decide to do, I’m going to do it … at home in the Quad-Cities.”

Aguilera paused in mid-sentence, glancing down at a small patch of green growth at the base of one of the eagle walls at Hero Street.

“I was going to pull that bit of weeds, but I thought people driving by would think the guy in the uniform must be crazy,” he said, smiling from beneath his Army cap. “I guess I’m a little protective of it.”

Barb Ickes can be contacted at (563) 383-2316 or bickes@qctimes.com.

E-mail

To: Mark Ridolfi (Times editorial page editor)

From: Juan Diego Aguilera

“I’m currently in the Army and I return home for r&r from Al Asad -Iraq on July 25th, 2008 for 18 days. When I was in high school I was chosen as one of the six Hispanic students to sculpt the brick Eagle walls for Hero Street, Silvis. I thought it would make a great short story... When I was approached to do the eagle walls I wasn’t that interested until my family explained to me how much of an impact the monument would make to the small community, as well as the quad cities and for all Hispanic individuals in the military........I hadn’t considered really joining the military and now here I am in Iraq preparing to come back to the good ole’ Quad Cities which is where I was born and raised and will probably never leave.”

The entrance walls to Hero Street Monument: Six Quad-City students were nominated by local art teachers six years ago to help sculpt the entrance walls to the Hero Street Monument in Silvis, Ill.

The students, under direction from professional artists, used unfired, individual bricks and sculpted a collection of shapes onto them. The shapes formed two images of eagles when placed together.

Each brick was numbered, fired in a kiln, and returned to the shape of the eagles, creating the two entrance walls. The giant raptors — shields to their breasts — clutch an olive branch in one talon and arrows in the other and greet visitors at the sidewalk entrance to Hero Street.