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Family, friends salute Andrew J. Aviles Circle

A street in a new subdivision honors a Robinson High School scholar who died in Iraq at age 18.

By ELISABETH DYER
Published November 18, 2005

BRANDON - Andy would surely get a chuckle out of this. Nearly 50 of his friends and members of his sprawling Latin family gathered last Saturday on lumpy new sod.

They squeezed into a patch of earth in a new development of townhomes south of State Road 60 off Falkenburg Road. They squinted into the noon sun. Sometimes tearful, sometimes laughing, they remembered Andy.

He was 18, a Marine at the siege of Baghdad on April 7, 2003, when he was killed near a bridge over the Tigris River.

"He's probably looking down now," his father, Oscar, said, "and being the clown that he was, laughing at us." He's probably thinking, "What are they doing down there for me now?"

They were naming a street and dedicating a plaque in his honor. Andrew J. Aviles Circle runs like a teardrop through the new subdivision, Alexandria Place.

Mike Storey, a division president for Morrison Homes, decided to name the street after Aviles after reading a newspaper story about Andy's death.

Andy had graduated third in his class at Robinson High School. He postponed a full academic scholarship at Florida State University, where he planned to study business, to serve in the Marine Reserves.

Storey, whose own son was 17 at the time, said he felt the depth of Oscar Aviles' loss when he read the father's comments at the funeral. His father said: "What I am thinking is that I want him back."

Storey decided to act.

"I thought, we have some resources. Maybe we can do something," he said.

Even though the street sign and neighborhood garden are small, he said, "what they represent is what's important: for Mr. and Mrs. Aviles to know that people care, that people they wouldn't otherwise know - that Andy's story has touched them."

Now, the community's 84 residents and visitors will read Andy's words, engraved on a plaque: Don't talk about it, be about it.

The moment was "bittersweet," said Andy's mother, Norma.

She and Oscar bought a home on Andrew J. Aviles Circle and plan to move to Brandon one day. For now, they aren't ready to leave the home in South Tampa where Andy grew up.

His room remains the same as when he shipped out for Iraq.

"Sometimes I go there and sit on his bed," Mrs. Aviles said.

A cracked ceramic cross with a child kneeling hangs over the bed. From his first communion, his mother says. Below that is a Marine Corps emblem.

"Andy's all over this place," his father said.

At a solid 5 feet 6, 165 pounds, he was obsessed with working out, said younger brother Matt, now 20.

An uncle, Iggy Ramos, remembered the macho teen who had become Robinson High School's only cheerleader, just to mingle with cute girls in short skirts.

A former guidance counselor remembered how the three Aviles siblings each graduated near the top of the class and how after Andy died, so many students had said he was their best friend.

His older sister, Kristine, remembers just starting an adult relationship with Andy. How he would laugh harder at his own stories than anyone else. And how changed he looked in uniform from the boxer shorts he wore while playing video games.

A cousin remembers babysitting him and how deep his voice was as a toddler. She has learned to "make the best of every day, because that's all you get."

Every Sunday, his parents put flowers at a memorial for Andy at the Dale Mabry entrance to MacDill Air Force Base. They salute military vehicles that drive by.

"I don't want anyone to forget him," Oscar Aviles said. "I don't want the community to forget him."

[Last modified November 17, 2005, 08:14:05]