Marc A. Arizmendez, 30

Army, Staff Sergeant

Based: Hohenfels, Germany

1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment

Supporting: Operation Enduring Freedom

Died: July 6, 2010

Qalat, Afghanistan

Married, 2 children

Gender: Male

Hometown: Anaheim

High School: Schurr High (Montebello)

Burial: Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Va.

Arizmendez died July 6 of wounds sustained when insurgents attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive device in Qalat, Afghanistan. Specialist Roger Lee of Monterey, and Private 1st Class Michael S. Pridham, 19, of Louisville, Kentucky were also killed in the incident. On a Facebook memorial page created by his older brother, Arizmendez is remembered by friends as a great husband, father and soldier who was always willing to help a friend.

Roger Lee, 07/06/2010

Claudio Patino IV, 06/22/2010

Six memories of Marc A. Arizmendez

“

After days of sifting through decades of memories about my brother, I realize that many of the most recent exchanges with him when I visited him in Germany in early 2010. The snow was 2 feet high, but he and I would walk outside so he could smoke a cigarette after dinner.

The conversations were pretty one-sided: I was talking, and Marc listening, taking occasional drags and cupping the cigarette in his hands.

After I would make my point and run out of steam, I t typically looked to him for some sort of response. Then, in the style of a world-weary old cowboy, silent with but a few well placed words, he'd give me a wry smile that gave me pause to perhaps reconsider my intentions -- or move ahead.

In looking back at these conversations, I now understand that the way he exhaled his cigarette smoke and even turning his head were the signals to his opinion on an issue. It may have been his 11 years as an Army soldier that taught him to listen, think and then do, but wherever this Yoda-like persona initially developed, I now appreciate what, that at 30 years old, he was teaching me.

When I was a freshman in high school, I got a call from my mom at the hospital, where she had just given birth to Marc. She had asked me to help name him, and I thought that the alternate spelling of his name was a great choice.
I was always looking afterhim until I went away to college and our age differences helped to create more distance between us.

I did think of him as a boy for much of his life, but as he progressed through the Army, he displayed that lead-by-example quiet confidence that caught me by pleasant surprise and grew to admiration and pride.

Marc, I miss you and I love you. I will find ways to make YOU proud of me. It hurts a lot now but why shouldn't it? b/c you are special.

” — Al Arizmendez, July 11, 2010 at 3:11 a.m.

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Marc A. Arizmendez, 30

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Six memories of Marc A. Arizmendez

Share a memory of Marc