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The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Monday, April 28, 2003

Schofield neighbors remember soldier killed in Iraq ambush

By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer

As Sgt. Eugene Williams, a former Schofield Barracks soldier killed in Iraq, was laid to rest in Mililani recently, one family was remembering another fallen soldier with ties to Hawai'i.

Chief Warrant Officer Johnny Villareal Mata, 35, was one of nine members of the 507th Maintenance Co. out of Fort Bliss, Texas, who were killed in Iraq when their convoy was ambushed.

Mata formerly was part of the 25th Infantry Division (Light), and lived on base with his wife and two children, Eric, 17, and Stephani, 7, recalled neighbor Cheryl Danley.

The Matas lived next door to Danley and her husband, Jamie, a Black Hawk medevac pilot, on Cadet Sheridan Road.

"It was like the little cul-de-sac and courtyard, and all the kids played together," Cheryl Danley said. "He (Mata) played with the kids a lot. He'd push Stephani on the swings. She was daddy's little girl. She had him wrapped around her finger."

Cheryl Danley said Mata and his wife, Nancili, were "just very nice people, very friendly. We all stuck together, and watched out for each other's kids. We would feed each other's kids.

"It was an 'ohana atmosphere," she said. "If one kid got a Popsicle, the whole neighborhood got a Popsicle."

Mata was buried in his native town of Pecos, Texas.

Williams, 24, who was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment at Schofield from April 1998 to December of 2001, was killed by a suicide bomber on March 29. His wife, Brandy, lives in Waipahu.

Two other service members killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom had ties to Hawai'i.

Master Sgt. Robert J. Dowdy, 38, of Cleveland, also a member of the 507th Maintenance Co. and killed in the same ambush as Mata, has a brother in Kane'ohe, Army Reserve Master Sgt. Jack Dowdy Jr., 40.

Air National Guard Maj. Gregory Stone, who died March 25 in Kuwait after being wounded in an apparent grenade attack by a fellow American, was assigned to the Hawai'i Army National Guard.

Stone, 40, who was with the Idaho Air National Guard, trained with the Hawai'i Guard's 29th Separate Infantry Brigade for two to three weeks several times a year.