A motherʼs fight for honor and dignity: Steve Duin column

By Steve Duin | For The Oregonian/OregonLive

Come June, Martin Cerezo will finally find his rest at Willamette National Cemetery. His mother, Cheryle Cerezo-Gardiner, will hug the folded flag as a bugle call rises over the graves.

She’ll let go of her death-bed promise, catch her breath … then return to herbattlefield, a campaign to ensure no veteran, or their family, ever needs to work so hard to regain their benefits or their “honor.”

Martin Cerezo was Cheryle’s first-born. “He was the one I wanted from the time I knew girls could have babies,” she says. “But he was a difficult child. He bullied his brothers. I’ve often wondered how much of that was struggling with his sexuality.”

Cerezo told his mother he was gay shortly after graduating from a Miami high school in 1988. Thirty-five years ago, that revelation was devastating for a Reagan Republican attending a conservative church.

“After a lot of soul-searching, I realized nothing had changed about Martin,” Cheryle says.“I just had a new piece of information about him.” One they would not share for another four years with his father.

Cerezo enlisted in the Navy that fall. His uncle served in the Navy; his grandfather was a Seabee in the Aleutians during World War II.“The sea is in my family’s blood,” Cheryle says.“That was a tradition he wanted to carry on.” Cerezo also knew he needed military discipline, and it turned him into a 4 O sailor. He served aboard a storied aircraft carrier, the USS Constellation. He lined up for officer’s candidate school.

And, after 19 months, he was outed as a homosexual.

It was 1990, four years before “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Homosexuality was still grounds for a court martial.“He was told he needed to name names, anyone he’d had a relationship with,” Cheryle says,“and the Navy would go easy on him.” Cerezo did. The Navy didn’t. He was sent home with an “Other Than Honorable” discharge.

“The worst you could get,” Cheryle says.“It was a disgrace. A scarlet letter. It prevented you from serving on any police force, including Portland’s, or holding any job that required government clearance.” Or any job her son cared about.

Cerezo was forever the nomad, living in Texas, New York, Portland, San Francisco.“I’m not sure if he was looking for something, or if he was trying to lose himself,” Cheryle says.“He met Madonna. He danced with Boy George. He’d call from some swanky penthouse in a Miami Beach hotel. But he had no money because he couldn’t hold a job. No place was ever satisfying.”

He was sometimes homeless, often on drugs.“Fairly heavy stuff,” Cheryle says.“In 2000, he was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver, and told to avoid drugs and alcohol. I don’t think he ever gave that (advice) another thought.”

“Martin and I were close, a 14-month age difference,” says his brother, Jason, who served eight years in the Navy Reserve.“We had the same group of friends. Our lives were identical. But I came out of the Navy married with kids, a business owner, homeowner, all the markings of a successful life. And he came out homeless, battling drugs, and with this general sense of being a pariah.

“The only thing I can point to is that when I left the Navy, I got an honorable discharge. When he left the Navy, he was given ʻOther than Honorable,’ which continued into his life as shame and this need for secrecy.”

Martin died of cancer in January 2021, painfully overweight, blanketed by indignity. He’d always wanted the redemption of a military burial, and on his deathbed, Cheryle promised him she would finish his quest to have his discharge upgraded and find a burial plot at Willamette. For the last time, he squeezed her hand.

Cheryle Cerezo-Gardiner was true to her word, though it took 20 months.

She contacted Lawyers Serving Warriors and worked with the attorneys at Winston & Strawn, a Chicago firm that provides incredible pro bono service to veterans. They helped her secure the upgrade in Martin’s discharge to “Honorable.”

When the National Cemetery Administration said her son still could not be buried at Willamette because he hadn’t served the minimum requirement of 24 months, Cheryle enlisted the help of Oregon’s two U.S. senators, Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden.

And on the advice of Ian Michael, the Marine Corps Iraq war veteran serving as the LGBTQ+ coordinator at the Oregon Department of Veteran Affairs, Cheryle asked Matthew Quinn at the Department of Veteran Affairs for an exemption on the minimumservice requirement.

“They told me it could take anywhere from 18 months to five years,” Cheryle says. Quinn granted her request in less than three months.

You would hope.“I’m sorry a mother had to go through what she did,” says Kelly Fitzpatrick, a retired Army officer and the first openly lesbian director in ODVA history. “As with so many things, policy and the law must catch up to big social changes. No veteran should ever feel they need to stay in the shadows.”

In the shadows, Martin Cerezo never lost his love for the Navy. When the USS Constellation was towed from Bremerton, Wash., to Brownsville, Tex., for its scrapping in 2014, Cerezo tracked its final voyage around Cape Horn each night on a webcam.

“The Navy lost a lot when it lost him,” his mother says.“There were no marks against him. His only sin was that he was gay.”

He will be buried June 9. No interment date has yet been set for the fear and bias that decommissioned him … and still denies benefits and military burials, Cheryle believes, to thousands of other gay veterans. Her fight for them will continue.

“It floors me that we’re still dealing with this,”Jason Cerezo says.“I don’t know how long we’re going to be fighting this battle. But I will say that putting my brother in the ground at Willamette is a step. It’s not the final step. But it feels good.”

-- Steve Duin stephen.b.duin@gmail.com

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