A home in Queens has become a refuge where anguished relatives and friends of those who died in Iraq – or are still fighting there – gravitate for comfort and prayers.
Maria Duran began running the Council of Family and Friends of Active Duty Military – which now has some 350 members – from her house on 37th Drive in Corona after her son, Army Spc. Alex Jimenez, 25, disappeared in the war zone in May. He’s still missing.
When the news was reported, not only friends and relatives, but strangers, many with relatives in Iraq, began dropping in. Duran was so moved, she turned her home into a sanctuary for military families.
“What was I going to do? Lock myself up in a room, and cry all day?” the home-care attendant asked. “Every day, someone new comes – they understand they’re not alone anymore.”
The “first one at my door” last May, she recalled, was Martha Clark, whose son, Army Spc. Jonathan Rivadeneira, 22, was serving in Iraq.
On Sept. 14, Rivadeneira was reported killed – and his mother and other family soon gathered in Duran’s back yard.
“I’ll probably just remember him the day he was born and the doctor put him in my arms,” Clark said