Gilroy
– Jeramy Ailes appeared shy on the surface, but family and
friends knew that underneath lurked a prankster who could make
anyone laugh. No matter how grim the situation, they say, Ailes
turned it around with his famous wit and smiling brown eyes that
will be remembered most.
They’ll also remember the way he deeply cared for others, even
those he didn’t know. That was why he decided to join the Marine
Corps.
By Lori Stuenkel
Gilroy – Jeramy Ailes appeared shy on the surface, but family and friends knew that underneath lurked a prankster who could make anyone laugh. No matter how grim the situation, they say, Ailes turned it around with his famous wit and smiling brown eyes that will be remembered most.
They’ll also remember the way he deeply cared for others, even those he didn’t know. That was why he decided to join the Marine Corps.
Lance Cpl. Jeramy Ailes, 22, really cared.
He shocked everyone close to him when, in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, he stopped taking college courses and instead enlisted to serve his country.
“When he said was joining, it was hard to believe,” said Air Force Sr. Airman Amy Santos, Ailes’ cousin. “He never seemed to me to be someone to join the military because he was always joking around.”
But Jeramy Ailes did well in the Marines, she said, and he wanted to be on the front lines.
“I wanted to talk him out of it, get him to join a different branch, but he was so excited to be going into the Marines.”
The quiet young man known for his love of cars, camping and country music was a brother to three sisters and the only son of Joel and Lana Ailes of Gilroy.
“He was a very funny person, he liked to joke a lot,” Joel said quietly, while sitting with a few close family members in his sun-lit living room Tuesday morning.
He was such a joker that his mother was almost waiting for her son to walk into the room Monday night, as the family was crying at the news of his death in action.
A makeshift memorial filled the mantel in the Ailes’ living room Tuesday morning: An American flag-painted wreath, a burning candle, and pictures of Jeramy hunting or hugging his sisters Janay, 23, Jenny, 14, and Leah, 12.
Cars of family members and friends crowded in front of the family’s single-story house, located in a hushed cul-de-sac off Westwood Drive. Jeramy’s shiny black pick-up truck with a U.S. Marine Corps sticker on the rear window sat in the driveway, as did his mother’s white SUV, with several Marines stickers and a tattered yellow ribbon bow that she put up when her son went on his first tour of duty to Nasiriyah, Iraq, in March 2003.
Another yellow bow adorned the trunk of a tree in the Ailes’ front yard, its color matching the fallen leaves on the lawn. A few houses down, a neighbor had posted a sign bearing an American flag and the words, “Support our troops.”
The neighborhood wasn’t so quiet when Jeramy was in town.
“I always knew when Jeramy was home,” said Linda Miramontes, who lives next door. “He was always blasting country music and working on his cars.”
“He was kind of mischievous when he was small,” she recalled.
Ailes usually tinkered with an old yellow ’70s-era Volkswagen Beetle that he had outfitted with off-roading lights and suspension, and dubbed the “Baja Bug” or “Squirrel Racer.” On weekends, he would drive the infamous vehicle through dirt and mud at the Hollister Hills Recreational Park.
He loved to wreak havoc in his “Baja Bug,” driving around like a maniac, said Chris Johnson, Ailes’ best friend who is stationed with the Air Force in Washington.
“When we’d get to a friend’s house he’d pull the U-brake and do crazy things with it,” Johnson said. “That was kind of his fun toy.”
Johnson met Ailes at Uvas Creek, one of their favorite fishing holes, when he was 14. Ailes was an avid outdoorsman who loved to hunt and camp at Coyote Reservoir or South Lake Tahoe.
He took a telescopic fishing pole to Iraq, just in case, although he never found a chance to use it.
Joel Ailes said his son enjoyed mechanics so much he planned to finish his general education at Gavilan College and enroll in a trade school to work on airplane engines.
“When Jeramy was in high school, we had seven to eight cars out here any one day, with seven to eight boys working on them,” Joel Ailes said. “It bugged the neighbors, but I liked it because I knew where he was.”
Not that Ailes was a trouble-maker, though. At least, not a serious one. Jokes and pranks were more his style.
“He’d be the prankster in the crowd, but he wouldn’t go too far with the jokes,” said Gino Oliveri, Ailes’ friend through high school.
He loved to tease his sisters, too, Janay Ailes said. Just a year apart in age, she said she remained close to her brother, even if they got on each others’ nerves at times.
“We were so close, it was just ridiculous,” she said. “Despite how much we bickered and fought, we were so close, and no matter what was going on, we knew how each other was feeling, we didn’t have to say anything.”
Ailes grew up in Morgan Hill until he was 10, when his family moved to Gilroy. He attended Morgan Hill’s P.A. Walsh Elementary School and in Gilroy attended Rod Kelley Elementary School, Brownell Academy Middle School, and graduated from Gilroy High School in 2001 before taking courses at Gavilan.
His mother Lana, whose maiden name is Barbaglia, a well-known South County family, is a secretary at Morgan Hill’s Barrett Elementary. Students there learned of Ailes’ death and are planning to hold an assembly in which they’ll post yellow ribbons on the school fence to honor the Marine.
By the end of the day Tuesday, hundreds of friends, family and neighbors had stopped by the Ailes home to express their condolences, Joel Ailes said. Even more of Jeramy’s friends were expected later in the evening after they got off work.
“It’s been wonderful,” he said.
The visitors brought with them bouquets of flowers, plates of food, even cups of hot coffee. But mostly, they shared stories about Lance Cpl. Ailes.
Friend Daniel Navarro reminisced about milling in the GHS quad before class, and more of the “simplest little things.”
“Just the fun things, the memories you sort of take for granted: The things you don’t think about until they’re not there anymore,” Navarro said. “We don’t get to hang out like we used to, but to lose a friend to a war – it’s hard for us to comprehend.”
His cousin Santos, who also has served in Iraq and is now stationed in Utah, said Ailes was an all-around “goofball.”
“He always had to be doing something – he could never just be at home, he always had to be doing something fun,” said Santos, who lived a couple blocks away in Gilroy while growing up.
She said the 5’10”, 175-pound Ailes came across as shy to people who didn’t know him well. But for those who did, he was always the instigator with physical stunts, such as riding tricycles down the aisles of a local retail store.
“The only reason I did it is because he would make fun of me,” Santos said. “He would say, ‘You’re a chicken’.”
Anything to bring out that electric smile.
“He always had this grin on his face, and he still had it,” Joel Ailes said. “He’d be in all kinds of trouble and still smiling.”
In class, Oliveri said, Ailes had only to smile to make everyone in the room start laughing.
“If he had a grin on his face, you knew something was funny,” he said. “Even the teacher was laughing.”
While stationed in Iraq, Ailes showed a generosity to the people there that he used to lavish on his friends in Gilroy, Oliveri said, whether someone needed a few dollars or sage advice.
“I was one of the kids that didn’t have friends, and basically he became my friend,” he said.
Always a friend to everyone, Ailes is now a “hero,” said his high school friend Freddy Ross.
“He did it with a lot of honor and courage, and we all have a lot of respect for the guy,” It’s a tragedy, basically, is what it is. He’s so young, he had so much more to do in his life, but we know he’s in heaven, he’s with God.”
