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Thursday, June 25, 2009
Veteran Was Humble About His Awards
By Lloyd Jojola
Journal Staff Writer
A two-column-wide photo in a newspaper clipping yellowed since its 1967 publication shows Army Sgt. Paul Hernandez holding a row of medals he earned: a Vietnam Campaign Medal, a Purple Heart, two Bronze Stars, another Purple Heart and an Army Commendation Medal.
“I knew he got the Purple Heart because he had that on his license plate,” said Isidro Hernandez, Paul Hernandez's son. “But other than that, my dad was like, 'I really don't want to talk about that.' ”
“That” was his father's service during the Vietnam War.
“I just think it needs to be known what he did because, for one, I'm proud of him,” the son said.
Paul H. “Shorty” Hernandez, a resident of the McIntosh area, died June 3. He was 64.
It was only in recent days that the Hernandez family came across some of the old news stories about Paul Hernandez.
“We were just walking — guys laughing and joking — then all of a sudden my buddies started dying all around me,” starts a Dec. 27, 1967, profile that appeared in The Albuquerque Tribune. The story told about the 70 or so times he had come under fire.
“When they opened up, it was like a lawn mower was leveling the elephant grass,” the story reads. “We'd run smack into a large force of North Vietnamese regulars and they were tearing us up with Russian-made automatic weapons and stolen M-1 grenade launchers.”
Hernandez, who served in the Army from about 1966 to 1969, was eventually rotated back to the mainland U.S. and at Fort Lewis, Wash., trained troops who were headed into combat. Other medals he received for his war-time service included the National Defense Service Medal and the Vietnam Service Medal.
Though he was born in California and moved soon after to Albuquerque, Paul Hernandez's family was from the Hondo Valley near Lincoln.
His parents, Charlie and Pauline, lived in the South Valley, and in his younger years Hernandez moved back and forth between there and the Hondo area, Isidro Hernandez said.
The elder Hernandez graduated from Rio Grande High, his son said.
“He was family oriented,” his son said. “If there was anything to be taken care of through family, he was the first one to do it. No ifs, ands or buts.
“If there were a room full of strangers, before he left, he knew everybody. He was just very happy-go-lucky, and tried to do what he could for anybody.”
Paul Hernandez left the military with multiple medical problems related to combat, his son said, among them exposure to the Agent Orange herbicide.
But he became active in the realm of public service.
“He volunteered with (Youth Development Inc.) back in the early '80s, his son said.
When his son was in high school, Paul Hernandez also was football team equipment manager and an assistant golf coach.
“Also he was really involved in AA programs,” his son said. “He was 23-years sober.”
Hernandez was well-known for his work with the Game and Fish Department after he and other advocates successfully fought for more permits to allow youths to hunt.
Hernandez was a big outdoors man himself.
“If we weren't fishing, we were hunting or scouting or camping,” Isidro Hernandez said.
A memorial service with military honors was held for Paul Hernandez at Crossley Park in Moriarty on June 9.
Hernandez is survived by his mother, Pauline Hernandez; sisters, Charlene Hernandez, Maggie Ochoa and her husband, Efren, Theresa Samaniego and her husband, Manuel, and Martha Hernandez; brothers, Arthur Hernandez and his wife, Rita, James Hernandez and his wife, Theresa; son, Isidro “Sid” Hernandez and his wife, Marie; granddaughters, Kirstin, Victoria, Marianna; niece, Ruby and her husband, Rod; his boys, Jason, Jerry, George; and several extended family members and friends. He was preceded in death by his father, Charlie Hernandez; a brother, Melvin Hernandez; his grandmother, Miguela Hernandez.
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