The Aquino family immigrated from El Salvador due to Civil War. The government recruited young males for the army when they could hold a rifle. Some recruited at nine years old! Otherwise, guerrilla warfare side would capture unlucky males to fight against the government.
Ernesto Aquino’s military career began at 18 in June 1995 because his mother would not sign for him to enter early. She had immigrated to keep him our of war already! As a marine, he had been five deployments —- Iraq three times and Afghanistan two times.I n May 2012 after 17 years in the military, he only needed one more enlistment and he was golden. He thought he would be in the safe zone.
On Mother’s Day, he woke up in a German hospital, and it took a week to stabilize him. A TNT filled explosion had hit him and his caravan so multiple doctors surrounded him at the hospital. He recalls laying on a stretcher with severely wounded military on a plane home. Some men, who lost missing limbs, were 19 or 20 years old. He heard ventilators running throughout the plane’s cabin. He arrived at Naval Medical Center on Balboa for physical recovery. They sent him home to a his wife and four children in a wheelchair. To this day, he needs Luna — a support dog — who notifies him when she senses that he will fall to the ground.
All the combat stress sent him into a long depression. He shut out his wife and kids with nothing mattering to him. It is a horrible feeling to not care and tune everyone out. With all the medicine, he had 32 pills for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Some pills counteracted the effects of other pills. He was in a bad, bad place where he contemplating suicide. One day, someone took him to turn a pen at Turn Around Veterans (TAV). He turned his very first pen at a lathe adapted for his wheel chair. For the first time, he cracked a smile!
The program gives you all the supplies and cut blanks for the veterans to make items free of charge. For him, he stopped thinking about medications because he was able to come to the club every Thursday. The guys were there to show him how to make bowls. His first beautiful pine bowl has a heavy bottom so he wouldn’t crack it. In this second pine bowl, he made it so light on the bottom. This bowl it had a tiny hole in the bottom. It reminds him that if you keep trying; you will get better. Eventually he was able to walk again.
Last year, he became the Chairman of the TAV program of the program that saved him. He just came back from working with world-renounced wood turner Glen Lucas to turn a bowl in Ireland. On Mother’s Day 2024, he came home in the same flight path from Europe, so it all came full circle. He helps guys that just turns pens and guys generating beautiful woodwork. TAV emphasizes improvement and celebrates all the items the veterans make.
Chairman Aquino displayed beautiful wood items for the Rotarians to purchase.
