By Mosettee Lorenz
By the time he was 22, Kansas native Ricardo León Martinez had dropped out of high school, gotten married and had four children, and he was at risk of going to prison for fighting and drinking.
But when he headed for Vietnam in the mid-1960s, he found a new perspective. In the years after the war, Martinez returned to school, got a college education and worked for the federal government for 34 years.
By Katie Woody
Lorenza Terrones Lujano has battled prejudice, assumed a traditionally male role as an athlete and worked diligently to send all four of her children to college, an opportunity she never had.
By Anthony Sobotik
Carmen Gonzalez has shouldered his responsibilities with grace
Gonzalez was milking cows at a neighbor's farm to help support his family by the time he was 12. And during World War II, he did his duty on the battlefield. Last but not least, when the mother of his eight children left the country after they divorced, he did his best to raise them.
By Nathan Wyman
For Ventura Terrones Campa, the gravity and brutality of World War II often seemed distant to her while living in the Kansas heartland of America. Like many thousands of wives left to raise their children while their husbands were fighting on the battlefields of Europe, North Africa and the South Pacific, Campa's goals were to maintain her household, tend to her daughter and wait to see if her husband, Diego Campa, would be one of the lucky ones who’d come home.