Hundreds say thanks in Wesley Chapel as hero comes home

At his homecoming in Land O’Lakes on Friday, Jose Pequeno is joined by his sister, Elizabeth Bagley, left, family friend Kimberly Bennett, center, and his 13-year-old daughter, Mercedes Pequeno, right. He was severely injured in Iraq in 2006.

Hundreds say thanks in Wesley Chapel as hero comes home
Tampabay.com - St. Petersburg,FL,USA
By Erin Sullivan, Times Staff Writer
Saturday, December 20, 2008


LAND O'LAKES — The grenade blasted him out the door of the Humvee. The soldier who had been sitting next to him was dead. Others thought Staff Sgt. Jose Pequeno was dead, too. Half of his skull was gone. But a medic cleared his airway and got him out of Iraq and to a hospital in Germany and then to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

It happened on March 1, 2006. Pequeno, then 32 years old, was a police chief in New Hampshire and the father of three children. Before that, he had served as a Marine, and later, he had enlisted in the National Guard. He was handsome and loved motorcycles and skiing. He and his wife lived a few miles from his younger sister and his mother. The last time they heard his voice was in a message he left for his mother's birthday a week earlier. They still play it sometimes. They don't know whether they will ever hear him speak again.

His mother, Nelida Bagley, and his sister, Elizabeth Bagley, have been by his side since then — nearly three years of caretaking. Nelida and Elizabeth both put their lives on hold when Pequeno was injured. They quit their jobs, moved out of their homes, put their things into storage.
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