Eduardo "Ed" Martinez can still describe the day in late February 1991 when he led his troops into the ground war of Operation Desert Storm. Now 76 and living in Bixby, just outside Tulsa, the retired Army officer says Veterans Day always brings those days rushing back.

Martinez was an infantry officer almost 20 years into his career when the Gulf War began. His unit was among the first to make contact with Iraqi forces. Getting there took about 50 hours of driving with fuel stops every nine hours and only half-hour naps in between. Then came about 30 hours of fighting.

He earned the Bronze Star for his work as an operations officer from January to March 1991. What stays with him most are the young soldiers he could not bring home, two of them just 21 and 22. For years he visited the grave of one of them in Arkansas.

A war that never fully ended for him

Like tens of thousands of other U.S. troops, Martinez was exposed to low levels of nerve agents after an Iraqi weapons depot was destroyed. He felt fine for decades. Today the damage has reached his heart, lungs and liver and the amount of oxygen he needs has doubled in the past year.

He talks about it without self-pity. He says he has had a very good life and that he will go when God decides it is time.

Building something in Tulsa

Service runs in his family. His father also wore the uniform and told him that serving the country was a duty. Martinez spent 20 years in the Army before retiring soon after the war.

In the mid-1990s he moved from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to Tulsa and became the first Mexican American to open a State Farm insurance office in midtown. Back then he says there was almost nothing for Spanish-speaking families. He helped start the city's first Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and helped establish Community Health Connection, a Tulsa health clinic.

Over the years he watched Tulsa's Latino population grow and he credits immigrants with building the city through construction work, restaurants and new businesses of their own.

Martinez stepped away from work at 66, but he is not slowing down in spirit. He dreams of opening a small cantina where neighbors can gather and talk. He also wants to help more Latino residents run for city, county and state office so the community he helped grow has a stronger voice.