Family Floods Phone Line With Tears, Prayers

When Marine Cpl. Joe Villarreal Jr. called his grandmother’s house the other night, about two dozen of his relatives and friends from the area around La Verne Avenue in East Los Angeles got almost 40 minutes of questions from him about a favorite denim jacket, a new car stereo and Mexican-style cookies.

No one mentioned the Persian Gulf War during the overseas telephone call, but it was clearly on everyone’s mind. Then, when it was Angelina Torres’ turn to talk to her cousin, the usually cheerful 8-year-old broke down and begged him to come home.

“I miss you so much,” Angelina cried into the telephone. “Please . . . come home. I love you so much.”

The scene Friday night of a crying little girl pleading for the return of a loved one prompted waves of tears in the living room of grandmother Theresa Sanchez. Even the few macho men out on the front porch, who rejected the phone chatter in favor of drinking a Budweiser, were seen wiping moist eyes in the cold air.

Villarreal, 21, avoided any talk during the call about his whereabouts or his future orders. But almost everyone who had driven from Norwalk and elsewhere on the Eastside seemed to know the call was a sign.

The evidence, based on knowing nods from his parents, suggested that Villarreal, a communications specialist, may be on his way to the Persian Gulf.

If so, he will be the sixth young man from the tiny working-class barrio around La Verne Avenue and Verona Street to be deployed in the Middle East.

Hints of war duty a few days earlier had prompted mother Dela Jean Villarreal, 39, to repeat what many Chicano parents say to their children when problems abound.

“Come home, mijo ,” she pleaded, using the affectionate term of many Spanish-speaking mothers for their sons.

She admitted that her motherly instincts had taken over for a few moments. But “I knew he couldn’t” really come home, she said.

By the time the phone call came Friday, the day had filled with emotional turns, of joyful highs, and of somber, depressing lows.

Villarreal’s parents, as well as those of La Verne’s five boys in the Gulf, were up before dawn when the news broke that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had offered to withdraw from Kuwait. Some of the parents called reporters around 4 a.m. to share their first thoughts about the news.

“It was mind-boggling,” Dela Jean Villarreal recalled.

Later, when President Bush rejected the Baghdad initiative and called it and its numerous conditions for withdrawal a “cruel hoax,” the parents seemed resigned to a continuation of hostilities.

“Well, after all, this is war,” said Joe Villarreal Sr., 43, the Marine’s father.

All of that was forgotten at 8:26 p.m. when the overseas call came in.

“Hi, mijo,” Grandma Sanchez cried into the receiver. “How are you?”

Several of Dela Jean’s sisters had installed a speaker phone so that the visitors crowded into the yellow stucco house on Clela Street--two blocks from La Verne--could speak at once with Villarreal.

But Grandma couldn’t figure out how to use the speaker phone. She didn’t care.

“ Papacito ,” she cried into the receiver, “I’m praying for you every day.”

For the next half-hour, relatives and friends took turns chatting for a few moments with Villarreal. Brother Alfred, 17, talked of new stereo speakers that only the truly hip can understand. Uncle Jaime of Norwalk told his nephew, “Hey, homey, take care of yourself.”

Martinez’s mother, Maria, offered a few encouraging words in Spanish. “God be with you,” she told him.

Many in the living room, their eyes still wet from Angelina’s sobbing message, grew quiet again when cousin Victor Sanchez, 15, a sophomore at Montebello High School, asked to speak to Villarreal. He had composed a short poem that he wanted to share.

The tears started to flow as Victor, who had discovered that being anti-war meant being against his cousin, read:

“America, in God we trust and God, please trust in America,

“Land that we cherish, honor and praise,

“Rich and prosperous in many ways.

“We know America, our light soon grows dim when hardship faints on the land.

“But America the Beautiful, you always seem to pull through,

“America, remember we love you.”