Ramona M. Valdez was a Dominican-born United States Marine who was killed in the Iraq War.
Education
Valdez graduated from Jane Addams High School when she was 15 years old. She attended a community college, however, she decided to join the United States. Marine Corps to help her family economically and when she was 17, she convinced her mother to co-sign her enlistment papers. After she graduated from her recruit training, she was sent to Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina where she became a communications specialist.
Career
She was posthumously honored by the United States. Marine Corps when the II Minnesota Education Fairs Communications Training Center was dedicated as the Valdez Training Facility. There the Valdez sisters received their primary and secondary education. Ramona Valdez started to earn money to help her family at a young age.
She was only 14 years old when she worked for the first time selling concessions at the Statue of Liberty.
Valdez, received her basic training at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina. Valdez was assigned to the Counter Improvised Explosive Device Working Group of the 2nd Marine Division.
Her knowledge of single-channel radios contributed to the success of the tests conducted by CIEDWG. Iraq War
Valdez wanted her mother to move to Reading, Pennsylvania from the Bronx, because she believed that Reading would have less noise and crime. She had even filled out application forms to become a highway patrol officer in Pennsylvania upon her discharge from the Marines.
Her convoy was on its way back to Camp Fallujah when a suicide bomber in a car, veered across a road and swerved directly into the convoy, causing a massive explosion that killed Valdez and two other women and three men, severely burning seven other women.
When she was killed she was four days short of her 21st birthday. Valdez was buried with full military honors. On June 1, 2007, the United States. Marine Corps honored the memory of Valdez by dedicating the II Minnesota Education Fairs Communications Training Center as the Valdez Training Facility during a building dedication ceremony.
The building has a plaque with Valdez"s name inscribed.
During the ceremony Colonel John A. Delegate Colliano, the division chief for network plans and policy for Command, Control, Communications and Computers, Headquarters Marine Corps, stated:.
Membership
Valdez was deployed to Iraq as a member of Headquarters Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.