Jim Cisneros was only 9 years old when his brother, Marine Cpl. Roy Cisneros, was killed in Vietnam on Sept. 11, 1968.
Cisneros, who was awarded the Navy Cross posthumously, was among 10 members of the Edgewood High School Class of 1967 who were killed or listed missing in action during the Vietnam War.
Although Jim Cisneros was quite young then, the memories of the day two Marines came to his family's home to inform his parents of their son's death remain vivid nearly 47 years later.
"We were shocked," Cisneros, who turns 56 on June 5, said Saturday. "It was quite a loss for all of us. My mother didn't eat for days and was never the same. My father was really upset, beside himself."
Emma Garza has known that pain and anguish. Her brother, Army Cpl. Raul "Roy" Gutierrez, was killed in Vietnam on May 29, 1967 – about a week after she graduated from Edgewood High School. Gutierrez was a 1965 Edgewood graduate.
"I was 18 and he was 21 when he died," Garza said Sunday. "It was a very traumatic and emotional time for my family. He was my parents' only son. It was devastating, not only for us, but for the whole community. There were so many casualties from the Edgewood community. We were losing our brothers, our friends. Our amigos were all dying at the same time."
The memories of those dark days are especially poignant on Memorial Day for Jim Cisneros and Emma Garza, who was among a group of 1967 Edgewood High School graduates that spearheaded a campaign to make the Edgewood Vietnam Memorial a reality.
Dedicated on Memorial Day in 1988, the memorial at Edgewood Veterans Stadium honors 54 former Edgewood ISD students who were killed or listed missing in action during the Vietnam War. All but three of the casualties were Hispanic, and all attended schools in one of the poorest school districts in the state.
Every Memorial Day since 1988, the fallen have been honored with a poignant ceremony that reflects the unflagging patriotism of a proud community.
The Edgewood district's 28th annual Memorial Day ceremony at the Kennedy High School auditorium Monday drew a crowd of about 500. The event was moved is usually held at Veterans Stadium, but was moved indoors because of rainy weather.
"This memorial is very important to the Edgewood community," said Ruben Rendon, a 1967 Edgewood High graduate who serves as president of the group that organizes the annual Memorial Day ceremony. "And it's important to the Edgewood Class of 1967 because we lost so many people in Vietnam.
"They never had a chance in life. They went straight from high school into the service. They either got drafted or volunteered, and six months later they were in Vietnam. They were just 18, 19, 20 years old. A year after graduation, they were dead."
Roy Cisneros, who was 19 when he died, was the fourth of seven sons born to Elvira and Domingo Cisneros, both now deceased. Roy was 10 years older than Jim, the youngest in the family. Born in Robstown, Roy moved to San Antonio with his family in the mid-1950s.
"We were very close," Jim said. "He taught me how to ride a bike. He was very protective of me and all of us. If there was anybody picking on anybody in the family, he'd put a stop to it quick."
Roy Cisneros demonstrated those same qualities as an exemplary Marine on Sept. 11, 1968, when he was killed during a firefight in Quang Tri province. Cisneros and his unit were on a reconnaissance patrol when they were pinned down by enemy fire. He directed his men's fire to destroy three enemy bunkers and singlehandedly attacked a fourth enemy emplacement.
Using grenades and an anti-tank assault weapon, Cisneros knocked out the fourth bunker but was killed in the attack. Cisneros' parents later received his Navy Cross, the Navy's second-highest honor for valor, in San Antonio.
"His resolute determination and intrepid fighting spirit inspired all who observed him and were instrumental in his unit accounting for 45 North Vietnamese soldiers confirmed killed," the citation reads. "By his courage, aggressive leadership and selfless devotion to duty, Corporal Cisneros upheld the highest traditions of the United States Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country."
Cisneros also received the Vietnam Military Merit Medal, Vietnam Gallantry Cross and Vietnam Service Medal posthumously – in the mail – three years later.
"That didn't sit too well with my mother," Jim said. "She was hurt by that. They didn't follow protocol. Somebody should have presented those medals to my mother. But my brother was a hero in an unpopular war. That's the bottom line. It wasn't like World War II when you got a ticker-tape parade when you came home.
"We will always respect what he did and we always will stand by what he did. The true heroes of this country aren't the basketball players or the football players, or the movie stars. It's the men and women who put on the uniform in defense of his nation."
Forty-four years after his death, Cisneros was awarded the Texas Legislative Medal of Honor. Then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry presented Elvira Cisneros, who died in 2013 at age 89, with the medal on Sept. 1, 2011 at Roy Cisneros Elementary School.
Cisneros' family donated his medals to the school. They are prominently displayed near the school's entrance, along with a photo of Cisneros, a plaque and his Navy Cross citation.
Cisneros attended Cenizo Park Elementary School, which was razed and rebuilt in 2009. The school was renamed to honor Cisneros on Dec. 7, 2009. He attended Truman Middle School before going on to Edgewood, where he played football. Cisneros enlisted in the Marines during his senior year and reported for boot camp in San Diego two weeks after graduation.
Jim Cisneros still remembers how much his mother looked forward to getting mail from Roy. Nothing was ever quite the same in the Cisneros home after his brother's death, Jim said.
"There's an old expression – I don't know who wrote it – that with death comes a shocking jolt of reality," he said. "There is no one that can go out of his world without affecting the lives of someone else. That pretty much would sum up my feelings."
Cisneros felt such a profound sense of loss that he couldn't bring himself to read the citation for his brother's Navy Cross until 1988 – 20 years after he was killed.
"I knew he had been killed and it affected me greatly, but I didn't know how he had been killed," Cisneros said. "I had always been told that he had been killed in an ambush, which technically it was. I wasn't aware of the value of these medals at the time. When I read the (Navy Cross) citation, that's really what moved me. It had an impact on me.
"When he went into that last bunker, he knew he wasn't coming back. But he did it anyway. He made the ultimate sacrifice because he knew other people's lives were on the line. He died for them to live."
