FRESNO, Calif. — Most people haven’t understood Richard Martinez III’s dreams.
As a teenager, his friends asked why he wanted to throw his life away when he told them he planned to join the U.S. Army after high school. They couldn’t fathom why a stellar student and athlete who won top national awards for Academic Decathlon and wrestling would trade a college ticket for a gun on a battlefield.
A few years later while serving as an Army infantryman in Iraq, his fellow soldiers laughed when he said he planned to go to Harvard University one day.
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