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Saturday: Dedication of Monument Honoring 4 Fallen Rockland Soldiers

The monument will honor Army Cpl. Manny Lopez, Capt. Phillip Esposito, Marine Cpl. Steven Vahaviolos and Army Spc. Justin Garcia

Yolanda Lopez could always see her son from far away.

“You could just tell by his signature smile from one ear to the other,” she said. “You saw Manny coming from far away just by his white teeth.”

And what Manny Lopez loved almost more than anything else was baseball.

“Baseball was his life. He grew up in Haverstraw and was an avid Little League player from starting when he was four until he was 18,” Yolanda Lopez said. “He was very upset when he had to stop playing Little League. I remember telling him that one year would have to be his last year and he said, ‘Are you kidding me, I can’t play next year?’”

After Manny stopped played baseball and graduated from North Rockland High School, he joined the Army, where, much like out on the baseball field, he excelled.

“He just wanted to make us safe here. I respect him for that. I always gave my kids choices,” Lopez said. “When he went to basic training, he did so well. You could tell it was in his heart. He aced his class for shooting when they use the riffles, and he would tell me how well he was doing in all of these other classes too.”

Lopez eventually went off to Iraq, where he was killed in 2005. Last year, the village of Haverstraw honored Lopez and his love of baseball by naming a new baseball field after him, and so in July 2010, the Corporal Manny Lopez Municipal Ball Field opened off of McKenzie Avenue.

“He would be jumping for joy,” Lopez said of her son if he knew a baseball field was named after him.

On Saturday, Lopez and Haverstraw will take another step toward remembering and honoring Manny Lopez when a monument at the stadium will be unveiled and dedicated. The monument will not only honor Lopez, but the three other soldiers from Rockland who have died in Iraq: Capt. Phillip Esposito, of Suffern, who died in June 2005, Marine Cpl. Steven Vahaviolos, of Airmont, who died in May 2006, and Army Spc. Justin Garcia, of Valley Cottage, who died in November 2006.

The dedication will take place Saturday at Manny Lopez field starting at 1 p.m.

“Like the other parents, my husband and I know the painful heartache of losing a son in the military service,” said Joan Esposito, Phillip Esposito’s mother. “We are proud to stand next to the other families as we honor the lives of our sons through this monument.”

The monument is a sculpture of Manny Lopez created by Eric David Laxman, who works out of Garnerville, and has the names of the other three soldiers and pictures of them etched onto it’s base.

“They wanted to do some kind of a bust of a portrait, and gave me a number of photographs of Manny,” Laxman said. “I even had Yolanda and a nephew come so I could get a better sense of the shape of Manny’s head, because pictures aren’t usually taken with that in mind. You want the sculpture to really feel alive and capture what you’d see in a portrait of him.”

Laxman said he worked on the clay sculpture for a few months and made a plaster copy of it eventually. He said he also worked with Polich Tallix in Newburgh and Travis Monuments in Nyack, who helped with the granite base of the monument. Laxman has been in touch with Lopez for about three years, when they first were connected after Lopez had another artist suggest a monument, but never followed up with her about it.

“I gradually learned the story of her son,” Laxman said. “Everyone I spoke to that knew her son loved him. They said he was really affable and a big baseball fan. It’s really a tragedy for a mother to lose her son. She’s still very upbeat and very positive and a generous person. I’m touched to be a part of honoring her son and these other soldiers. As an artist, it definitely becomes personal, trying to speak to the person and honor him as a boy. To honor his life.”

Yolanda Lopez said it’s taken about three years to finally get the monument ready because she had to raise funds to pay for it and formed a fund to do so. She said they hosted annual bowling nights, sold t-shirts and stickers and were given donations, including the last bit of money needed by the Haverstraw Policemen’s Benevolent Association. Lopez said she was planning on unveiling the monument in the spring because that’s when she thought she’s raise the rest of the funds needed, but the final donation allowed them to finish everything earlier.

“This was my dream to finish this. I’m the type of person who feels bad asking for money, so it took a while to raise all the money we needed,” Lopez said. “I’m very excited. I know there’s going to be a lot of tears. I’m going to cry. The families are going to cry. I hope my son is looking down and saying, ‘Way to go, ma.” I never thought I could do it.”

While Lopez thought that finally completing the sculpture would be the end of the fund, the others involved with it convinced her to keep it going. And so in the future, Lopez said, they will organize one bowling night a year with all the funds going to a college scholarship to a graduating senior from North Rockland. Lopez said she’s confident they can raise at least somewhere between $500-$1,000 each year.

Lopez said she and the families of the three other soldiers being honored have become close, and that while everybody works full-time, they often came out and helped raise funds with her when they were able to. Steven Vahaviolos’ father Gus Vahaviolos said it’s been impressive seeing how much Lopez has done to raise funds, and that it’s an honor to have his son included in the monument.

“We’re thankful that our son is honored this way,” he said. “He’s up with God now and we hope he can look down and see it.”

Early Thursday morning, the Rockland County Marine Corps League met at the Rockland Veterans Cemetery for a to honor fellow fallen marines since it was the 236th birthday of the marine corps. 

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Steve Vahaviolos' grave was one of many that the marines honored in a salute to. 

“I’m glad they did this. My son was a marine and I got to know these guys (the marine corps league) through different ceremonies,” said Gus. "When any of these things that come up, these military days, it’s not easy. It’s still hard."

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Joan Esposito said she hopes the monument becomes a symbol for what all four soldiers stood for.

“This monument will become part of the fabric of our community,” she said. “I hope it inspires people to take stock into who these men were, and how their values should inspire our own. They put themselves into harms way to protect us. They were just ordinary young men. I’m certainly not ashamed to say the dedication of this memorial will bring tears to our eyes.”

Esposito said there will be some added meaning because the dedication is coming so close to Veteran’s Day, and that she often thinks about her son as well as Lt. Louis Allen from Orange County, who died along with Phillip. She said her son was a wonderful husband, father, brother and son who graduated from Albertus Magnus and then West Point.

“For 30 years I knew the joy of motherhood and now I know the pain,” Esposito said. “He is sorely missed each and every minute of every day. He taught us things about life and made us see the good in people.”

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