United Township
High School
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 Hero
Street, USA
The little thoroughfare in Silvis has earned the name with honor and with the blood of eight boys, all of Mexican descent, who gave their tragically young lives on fields of combat for a country they felt was well worth dying for.They truly died heroes, each of them. A Latin American Press correspondent in Mexico City remarked in a feature for international publication that the blood of the Aztecs surely ran in the United States. Tamil (Tony) Soliz has his own barbershop now up on 16th St.in Moline. But he grew up on The Street along with the rest of the fellows. He was in the Navy at the same time the others were in the service and he still remembers vividly how it was with them. Tony recently walked The Street with his sons. He pointed out the houses, named off the residents, and tallied the number of its boys who went to the service in World War II and Korean campaign. The total was 57 men and this doesn't include The Street's contribution to the Vietnam conflict. Of those 57, the two Sandoval families (not related) sent 13-six from one and seven from the other. Three Sandoval boys were killed in action. Members of the Ybarra-Gomez VFW Post have worked since 1961 to get community support for renaming The Street to honor those men who served, were injured and those whose life's blood was spilled on foreign soil in alien battlegrounds around the world. They grew up together on The Street, those men and they were uncommonly close. They were bound together by common heritage - this was the first generation of children raised in America by parents who had migrated here from Mexico years before. And there were other bonds. They were all poor. Although their fathers worked long, exhausting hours for the railroad and made more money that they would ever have realized in their native town, Leon, Gto. in Mexico, they were still poor. So the kids grew up as a tight clan that closed ranks quickly, and fiercely when necessary, against the emotional assaults of an affluent, Anglo-Saxon society that didn't realize their privation or restrictions of nationality. They roamed together over Billy Goat Hill, the small bluff rising from behind one side of the street. They hunted small game on the hills scrubby sides and shared two precious .22 rifles among the bunch of them. Joe Terronez, who works at International Harvester and is a Silvis alderman leading the move in the City Council to have the street renamed, was one of them. He also remembers how it was. They hauled cross ties for the railroad when they were still so young and their bodies so slight that it sometimes took around half dozen lads to hoist one of the heavy beams. They gloried in the money they made and in the railroad section gang fare - pinto beans with two cooked eggs on each plate. They crawled, half-bent in the tortuous, crouching posture of stoop - laborers along the truck crop rows outside Bettendorf, topping and packing onions and other crops. Heat at home was from old fashioned wood and coal heaters. They went together to the river flats with buckets to pick up pieces of coal along the railroad tracks that had fallen from the old coal - burning locomotive. This was daily chore of necessity and a family responsibility. They were athletic and proudly starred Willard Gauley's ball and track teams at McKinley School. They worshiped the tall physical education teacher who gave them unstintingly of his leisure time and himself. They grew up, starting going with girls and got jobs and in the plants or with the railroad. Then the second World War blasting into their lives.
JOSEPH GOMEZ was movie star handsome with an engaging happy-go-lucky heir and a generous nature that kept him constantly doing things for other people. He married pretty Alvina Garza in Davenport and become foolishly-proud, doting father after their little daughter, Linda, was born. He first went into the service during WWII, and spent some duty time in Germany. He came home and joined the reserves. The Korean conflict broke out and he was called back into service in September of 1950. He wrote tender letters back to the infant from the war-torn hell of Korea telling her how much he loved her and the fine woman he expected her to grow up to be. He sent her happy little telegrams whenever he could. And he wrote Tony Soliz on May 1st, that he was dubious about making it home from the war because "they're killing a lot of guys over here". On May 17, 1951 Joe Gomez shoved his bayonet onto his rifle and in an unbelievably heroic action walked alone into point-blank enemy gunfire to clear the way to a vital position where American and United Nations forces were being slaughtered in droves in the taking. (He died 11 days later. Awarded the Silver Star Posthumously) Almost single-handedly he was responsible for winning the objective while the Red Chinese pumped bullets into his stomach and chest. The young widow of laughing, loving Joe Gomez held their tiny daughter in her arms as she received his Silver Star for gallantry that was awarded posthumously. They name the Ybarra-Gomez VFW Post in his honor and the beloved child to whom he sent the happy telegrams grew up with a legend for a father.
He was cut down by enemy fire on Jan.19, 1945 in Belgium where the Battle of the Bulge was blazing terrible new history in the annals of the sheer awfulness of war. The children of Tony Soliz -
who is Claro's nephew - still ride the prized bicycle, the heritage
of the serious, sensitive boy who make his last sketched on a blazing
battlefield while death hovered over his shoulder.
GOOD - LOOKING TONY POMPA was a quiet, serious boy who held a sibling rein of authority over his two brothers and five sisters. From the time anyone can remember he loved airplanes and was fiercely determined to learn aviation. He fibbed about his age to enlist in the Air Force when he was 17. They made him a tail gunner in a bomber crew but Tony bought aircraft mechanic training books with his own money and studied aviation in his off - duty hours. Tony's plane was shot down on Jan.31,1944 over Aviano, Italy. His parachute opened before he could jump and he was trapped in the screaming aircraft. Survivors reported the plane burned for hours after it crashed. Tony's young wife, Delores, was left with his son, Tony Jr,. and his daughter, Sharon was born after her father's death.
Frank Sandoval was killed on June 20th, 1944 on the Burma Road. Ten months later on April 14th, 1945 Joe's combat crew was over ridden by enemy forces and wiped out. His two sons, Henry and Mike, like little Linda Gomez, grew up with memories of a father they never knew.
On April 6th , 1944 William's paratroop company zeroed in on a wooded area near Nijmegen, Holland held by the Germans. Offense stood between the American paratroops and their objective. Joe Sandoval received the customary Department of Defense telegram regretting the death of his son. As the GI-s went over the fence William was shot to death.
He swung gaily off to war wearing his paratrooper insignia with rakish pride. German bullets cut him down on March 24, 1945. When the telegram came to his mother who had a heart condition, quit fighting to live and slowly declined to her death.
He was lonesome for his young bide, the former Mary Beserra, whom he married three months before going to the service. He was also frustrated because Tony's ship, the U.S.S. Bisbee was pulling out of the harbor at Sasebo, Japan just as Johnny,s troopship was sailing in and the two close friends had missed each other that close. By Aug.13 he had been in the Korean mountains for 31 days living on "D" rations, sleeping on the ground in a makeshift bunker in the same clothes he had worn for a month. He wished Tony were there to give him a haircut. But there was good news-rumors that his company would be pulled back to a reserve area in two more weeks in safe territory. Two weeks later on August 27 Johnny's outfit was fighting its way to the top of a desolate, shell-pocket hill. They killed Johnny Munos that day. He was the first Silvis casualty of the Korean conflict -the disgusted, homesick kid who wanted only to get back home to the Street and his new wife. Shortly before he was killed, Claro Soliz wrote to Frank Sandoval that
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And among the scores
of boys who went to war from the long single block of The Street there
were the 8 who never returned.
SLENDER
CLARO SOLIZ was an
artist of such talent and sensitivity that it is still the first thing
they remember when his name is mentioned. When he went to war he made
a will leaving his treasures to various members of his family - a
ring, a typewriter, a bicycle among other things.
Frank
and Joseph Sandoval
loves sports as kids and played intramural athletics in high school.
The brothers went to mass at the picturesque little Our Lady of Guadalupe
Church as did the other kids on The Street. They played murderous
games of shinny with stout sticks and tin cans and as adolescents
hung around the corner of Second Street and 1st Avenue with the rest
of 
the guys
to marvel at the new cars and whistle at girls. When the war came
along they went.
William
Sandoval, from the
other Sandoval family, loved to box and was good in the ring. After
he went to the service, he fought an exhibition matches and service
competitions and planned to make boxing his peacetime career.
Gentle Peter Masias
was one of the nicest guys anyone would want to meet and he was
quite a singer with his clear, true baritone.
Johnny
Munos was plenty fed
up with the front lies in Korea by Aug.13, 1951. He wrote Tony Soliz
that the military hadn't "wasted much time getting me to this
lousy hole" and allowed emphatically that "this place isn't
fit for a dog".