Soldier Comes Home

McALLEN — There were two sides to Juan Campos. The reserved, gentle man was serious and honorable, a “mama’s boy,” always playing by the rules and making sure he did the right thing.

But the Juan Campos his family and close friends saw was goofy, energetic and adventurous, deploying moves on the dance floor that made at least one onlooker fall in love with him.

When his body lost the struggle Friday to fight off infection and the trauma of multiple skin-graft surgeries, he unwillingly left behind a new addition to his tight-knit family: His wife, Jamie Drury-Campos, told him days before he died that she was one month pregnant with their second child. They conceived the child during a two-week leave in late April.

U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Juan Campos had returned to the front lines in Iraq less than two weeks before his vehicle was destroyed by a roadside bomb attack in Baghdad on May 13.

Campos, 27, died Friday from complications associated with the severe burns he sustained in the attack.

His body returned home to the Rio Grande Valley on Wednesday in a white hearse and under police escort. His extended family followed close behind in a motorcade bearing bright red, white and blue messages painted on the windows, including one that read, “My uncle, my hero!”

Inside the funeral home, there were sobs, tears and fierce hugs.

The Campos name

Maria Campos raised her four boys and two girls mostly alone after the early death of their father, Santos, when Juan was just 4.

“My mom held us all together. She was father and mother to all of us,” said eldest brother Alfonso, 34.

The Campos house was full of love for whomever came through the door, and Juan was quick to accept newcomers.

Friend Keith Best, a buddy of youngest brother Danny, said that in junior high school, Juan was “the first one who embraced me.” Danny took a little time to be friendly, but Juan was instantly accepting.

And Maria was even more so, Best said. “She treats me like her son. She says, ‘What do you need, mijito?’”

Maria, whose children say she is strong and resilient through any crisis, collapsed Friday when she heard her son had died, and had to be taken to the hospital.

Days later, she was up and making tamales, but she still cries, inconsolable for long minutes, when visitors offer their condolences or mention Juan’s name.

“She has a lot of family support,” Juan’s older brother Jose said. “She’s going to go all out and still make her tamales and taquitos for everyone, make sure everyone who comes is settled.”

It’s a longstanding tradition in a home that even now does not have phone. People in need get what help the family, which has never been well off, can share or give.

“We may not have much, but we have pride in the Campos name, and he (Juan) carried that to the fullest,” Jose said.

Mama’s boy

Like the rest of her loyal brood, Juan was a “mama’s boy,” Jose said.

“Every mom dreams of a good boy” like Juan, he said. And “every woman’s dream (is) to have a gentleman like him.”

“He was a real quiet guy,” Best said. “He was open when he got to know you, but he needed that comfort.”

Juan barely appears in yearbooks at Nikki Rowe High School, where he was a member of the Class of 1998.

When he met his “dream girl,” he was too shy to approach her.

An infrequent drinker, he became a regular in 2000 with his buddies at now-defunct McAllen club A.K.’s, where he quietly pined for waitress/bartender Jamie Drury.

“He said, ‘I wouldn’t drink if it wasn’t for you,’” Drury-Campos said. “He had a crush on me forever.”

She eventually had to approach him — on the dance floor.

“He’s a very good dancer,” she said in an interview when Juan first arrived at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.

The dance skills are, according to his siblings, the mark of the Campos men. Each brother takes some credit for the moves that ensnared Drury-Campos, claiming Juan learned the moves from them.

Certainly, the young husband and father looked up to his older siblings.

“He always wanted to go wherever I went,” Jose said.

He went far

But Juan went much further than his brothers and sisters.

For a while he, Jamie and their son Andre, 8, lived on-base in Germany, and he went through two tours of duty in Iraq.

“I told him, ‘You being in the Army is going to make you a better man than I’ve ever been,’” Jose said.

Back then, Jamie was all for his enlistment in the Army, which they both saw as a good opportunity.

They bounced to bases from Texas to Germany, but Juan’s love of his family and of the Valley drew him back here.

Between his tours he worked for U.S. Customs and Border Protection in 2005 and 2006, Jamie said. He re-enlisted in the Army, and during his most recent deployment, she and Andre lived in McAllen, near the Campos clan and Jamie’s mother.

While quiet and gentle, Juan “was also real adventurous,” said his younger brother, Danny. “That’s the way he was — always up to trying new things.”