Elgin honors fallen Marine with honorary street renaming
The gold-star flag and small memorial outside the childhood home of U.S. Marine Cpl. Alex Martinez in Elgin long have marked it as a place of significance for the serviceman who lost his life April 5, 2012, in Afghanistan.
And now those signifiers have company.
The city of Elgin on Saturday unveiled an honorary street sign naming the 200 block of Melrose Avenue "Cpl. Alex Martinez Av" in honor of the only military member from the city to die in combat since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Martinez was 21 when he died after a roadside bomb went off during combat operations in Afghanistan. His awards include a Purple Heart medal and a Navy and Marine Corps achievement medal with combat "V" for valor.
His mother, Socorro Bethke, had wanted the honorary street sign since the early months after her son's death and said she appreciated the gesture made complete in a brief ceremony Saturday outside her home.
"Thank you for being here," Bethke told a crowd of a few hundred, including members of a color guard who stood with American flags waving. "We appreciate everyone's support."
Anthony Ortiz, a Marine veteran who attended Larkin High School with Martinez, worked with city council members since April to make the sign a reality.
"I asked what we could do as a city to help remember Alex," Ortiz said. "This is what his mom wanted."
Bethke thanked Ortiz on Saturday, too, telling him the honorary naming attended by at least 25 members of Martinez's family was "very nice."
Martinez's widow, Julianna Martinez of Carpentersville, said the ceremony brought back "good thoughts" of her late husband as she showed supporters the memorial she wears to him in the form of tattoos on her right arm.
She looked back fondly on her four-year marriage that began in 2008 and included a move to California for Martinez's position with a combat engineering unit at Camp Pendleton.
Her husband was on his second deployment in Afghanistan when he died, Martinez's widow said.
"It was a scary job," she said, of clearing improvised explosive devices so other Marines could pass safely to their destinations. "It was a tough job to get thrown into."
But it was the job Martinez wanted, his widow said. He graduated early from Larkin and had a recruiter visit his home to convince his mom to allow him to enlist, she said. That allowed Martinez to follow in the military footsteps of his father in the Navy and his aunt in the Army.
Brown street signs naming Melrose for Martinez are posted at Erie and Meyer streets, above the two other signs designating each intersection.
A separate effort to name the U.S. post office in Elgin after Martinez is being led by U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat from Schaumburg. The bill was unanimously approved in July by the U.S. House and referred to the U.S. Senate's committee on Homeland Security and governmental affairs.
"I plan to do everything in my power to ensure this legislation passes the Senate and is signed into law by the president," Krishnamoorthi said in a statement.