Father Remembers Fallen Murrieta Soldier

In August 2012, Tony Ruiz was among the Patriot Guard riders who escorted fallen Army Sgt. Eric Williams along Interstate 15, home to Murrieta.

What he did not know then was that just a few short months later, Ruiz’s son, Army Sgt. Clinton Ruiz would be coming home to Murrieta in the same manner. His 22-year-old son—a new father and husband—died Oct. 25, 2012 when his unit was attacked in Khas Uruzgan, Oruzgan Province, Afghanistan.

“He wanted to go to Afghanistan,” Ruiz said, on the eve of this Memorial Day. “He transferred from the 5th Battalion to the 9th Battalion.”

Ruiz said his son had just arrived in Afghanistan. Father and son were communicating by email, and Ruiz said Clint volunteered to go on his first mission “outside the wire.” Clint and fellow soldier, Staff Sgt. Kashif M. Memon, did not survive.

“He never got my last email,” said Ruiz, who saved those emails as well as the last text messages they sent each other.

Following a hometown funeral, Clint was laid to rest at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego. It is there Ruiz and his wife, Gina and their almost 2-year-old grandson, Caleb, along with Clint’s wife, Kira, planned to be on Monday, Memorial Day.

“I just want to be with my son, my grandson,” Ruiz said.

Clint also left behind a 20-year-old brother, Parker.

The family returned Friday from a cross-country trip to Fort Bragg, NC, where Sgt. Ruiz’s name was one of 17 added this year to the Special Operations Soldiers Memorial Wall.

Sgt. Eric Williams’ mother, Janet Williams, of Murrieta also visited Fort Bragg last week when her son's name was engraved near the 82nd Airborne Division museum.

Williams and Ruiz are among 6,679 wartime casualties in the 10 years since Operation Iraqi Freedom began.

Clint’s father described him as a “typical” Murrieta Valley High School graduate who went on to attend Mt. San Jacinto College for a year.

“He was getting kind of lost in what he wanted to do, he thought he needed a change,” Ruiz said.

So Clint followed in his father’s footsteps—the elder Ruiz served in the Navy—and decided to enlist in the military. He found his niche with the 8th Military Information Support Group—formerly Army Psychological Operations.

Though Ruiz was proud of his son, he admitted he and his wife “worried a lot” when they learned of Clint’s deployment.

“When I got the call I knew what it was,” Ruiz said.

When asked what he has been forced to learn through the experience of losing his son, Ruiz said: “There have been several things really. Most importantly, I think is that our lives are truly very short and our time with our loved ones very precious and tenuous.

“God really placed us on this earth with a very simple path to follow and we, and I mean me, tend to make our lives so much more complicated than they need to be or should be. We chase things that are not worth chasing at the expense of not spending the time with the things, or more specifically, the people that are truly important.

“I desperately wish I had all of the time back that was wasted on nonsense so that it could be spent with a little boy that grew into a truly special man.”