This article was published in The St. Petersburg Times on May 26, 1997:
By Wes Platt
Inchon, Korea, Sept. 15, 1950, 5:15 p.m.
Half of 1st Platoon foundered in a broken-down boat. The other half scrambled up the seawall at Inchon, then were pinned down by a North Korean army bunker.
Third Platoon, a reserve squad led by an untried Marine named Baldomero Lopez, scaled the wall and lobbed grenades into the zigzagging trench that led to the bunker.
Lopez, 25, a gung-ho soldier from Tampa, was not supposed to be here. He was assigned stateside, to a Marine Corps school. But he could not play it safe while his fellow Marines laid it on the line in Korea.
He begged. He cajoled.
The Corps granted his wish. Now, in his first firefight, Lopez closed on the bunker. He dropped to his knees, yanked the pin from a grenade and drew back his right arm for the pitch.
A staccato burst stitched the Marine’s right side. Lopez dropped the live grenade and fell on his stomach.
“Grenade!” he shouted.
With his right elbow, he pulled the grenade beneath himself, against his belly, and died so that his platoon might survive.
His sacrifice earned Lopez a Medal of Honor. In the half-century since, his selfless gesture has been commemorated several times.
A rifle range at the 1st Amphibian Tractor Battalion was named after him. The U.S. Naval Academy named the room he occupied as a midshipman after him. A pool at Tampa’s MacFarlane Park was dedicated in his honor. So was an elementary school in Seffner. The Marines named a pre-positioning ship after him.
At 10:30 a.m. Friday, ground is to be broken for the Baldomero Lopez State Veterans Nursing Home in Land O’Lakes, in central Pasco County.
More than 50 years ago he walked the halls of Hillsborough High School, an anonymous student. Today he is remembered as an overachiever, a soldier, a hero.