Wounded father, son help each other with recovery

MOORPARK, Calif. -- The crisply ironed uniforms of the father and son hang side by side in what they have dubbed the "Marine Corps closet," a dark space filled with vestiges of their tours of duty.

Two Purple Hearts. A backpack full of medical records.

The father is David R. Franco; the son is David W. Aside from the name, they share so much: proud service in Iraq, and a haunting, painful aftermath.

Both survived blasts by improvised explosive devices, and both have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder. They fight pain daily. They are jittery in crowds at the mall. They have memory lapses. The father has struggled to spell "the" or "to," while his son searches for words in a conversation.

Their injuries came three years apart. The elder Franco was still struggling to come to grips with his own suffering when he learned that his son had been injured in the same way.

This Oct. 19 picture shows medals displayed in the living room of the Moorpark, Calif., home of David W. Franco and his father.

"My heart dropped," said the father. "As a parent you want your kids to be safe. You don't want them to go through the same things you've been through."

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The military was in the elder Franco's blood -- his father, uncles and other relatives joined different branches -- and he was a career man in the Marine Corps. He thrived as a leatherneck.

Franco went to Iraq at age 43, hand-picked by Gen. James Amos, now the top leader of the Marine Corps.

He was on his team's second deployment to Iraq when he felt a premonition the morning of Nov. 4, 2005 that something was going to go wrong. He prayed and then called his wife, Adriana. Like always, he refrained from saying goodbye. Instead he told her, "I'll talk to you when I talk to you."

Franco turned on Los Lonely Boys, a Tex-Mex rock band, to calm his mind and then he and the other Marines headed out in a Humvee from Fallujah. As they drove underneath a bridge, Franco saw a tire covered with a burlap sack along the road and instantaneously thought it was a bomb.

Then he was unconscious. When he came to, blood was streaming from his ears. Nearby, his colonel was slumped over; Franco grabbed him and checked his pulse. The colonel slowly opened his eyes and gestured that he was OK. Franco couldn't hear and was dazed, but he refused help for nine hours while he aided the other wounded Marines. All survived.

When he returned home a month later, Franco says he knew something was wrong. He had lower back, neck and leg pains. His left eye kept fluttering. He had headaches, felt nauseous and would sometimes forget where he was going while driving.

Five months after the accident, he was diagnosed with traumatic brain injury. He scoured the Internet to learn everything he could.

All the while, he worried about his son in Iraq.

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As the military plane carrying his son to Iraq took off from March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County, the decorated combat veteran stood on a nearby road and sobbed.

"I remember telling the gunnery sergeant, watch my boy, make sure he comes home," he said.

The father got the call on the way home from a doctor's appointment.

It happened on April 24, 2008. Junior was en route to the village of Haditha on the last mission of his seven-month deployment.

He had just asked the gunner to keep an eye out for anything suspicious.

"He tapped me on the leg. I said 'What?' and that's when it blew. I came to, at the bottom of my tank. I couldn't hear. I couldn't move my leg," Junior said.

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Franco, 50, has retired from the military. He spends his day either getting help for himself or helping his son.

Junior, who's now in the reserves, recently asked his father to put on his pin at his ceremony promoting him to staff sergeant. He has picked his dad for the honor every time he has risen in rank.

"He didn't have a choice," Junior quipped, smirking. "I had to show him that I actually am getting promoted faster than he did in the Marine Corps."

Then he quietly admits: "I always like it. He's a big thing, big part of it."

On a recent night, the family made their weekly outing for "Taco Tuesday" at their favorite hangout, The Dugout. Here the Franco men are more at ease; the elder Franco slips into the kitchen to make tacos and salsa for his family. Junior says his dad makes a mean salsa, and his own specialty is guacamole.

While Franco cooked, Junior sat at the end of the table and joked with his sister Amanda, 25, who is pregnant with her first child. He recounted his own reaction when he learned that he was having a son.

"Yes!" he exclaimed.

Junior says his own son wants to become a Marine and that he will support him.

On good days like this one, the pain subsides -- and the bonds of brotherhood, of shared sacrifice, resonate.