CLOVIS, Calif. — Growing up in the San Joaquin Valley, where so many dreams are hemmed in by the fields, Jeremiah Baro and Jared Hubbard had the good fortune of being suburban boys. Their fathers weren't farmworkers following the crops, but a loan officer and a cop who expected even more for their sons.
But when they graduated from high school three years ago, the standout wrestler and the football star seemed unsure what to do next. This much was certain, family and friends said: Wherever one would go, the other would follow.
In the months after Sept. 11, 2001, they headed to Camp Pendleton as part of the Marine Corps buddy program. When Baro, 21, decided to try out for an elite sniper unit, Hubbard, 22, stood beside him. It was Jeremiah and Jared, sharpshooter and spotter, right up to the day last week when they set out on a mission west of Baghdad.
In the early morning darkness of Nov. 4, as their families were still sorting out the presidential election back home, the two young men, on their second tour of duty, were struck by a hidden bomb detonated by an Iraqi insurgent. It must have hit just so, because of the eight Marines walking along both sides of the road, only two -- Baro and Hubbard -- were killed.
On Thursday, as the nation observed Veterans Day, the two hometown boys were buried side by side in a cemetery just down the road from where they grew up in this old rodeo town.
Once grammar school rivals on the wrestling mat, they had become best friends who, on the eve of battle, made a pact to watch each other's back.
"I don't think Jeremiah would have made it if he had lived and Jared had died. I think the guilt would have killed him," said his aunt, Marissa Baro-Garabito. "One couldn't have come back without the other. So they came back together."
The war in Iraq, which seemed so distant a week ago, had come home. With tiny U.S. flags lining the quaint streets of old town and red, white and blue ribbons tied around elm trees that marked the path to the funeral chapel where two coffins rested in a rose-colored light, the war came home. With a disbelieving mother reaching past the perfect uniform to feel the wounds herself and a girlfriend picking out a letter from keepsakes in a shoebox -- a last letter that spoke of marriage and a full life after the war -- it came home.
