Petty Officer 2nd Class Allan Mark Cundanga Espiritu
Born: April 24, 1977 in Philippines
Died: November 1, 2005, Iraq
Petty Officer 2nd Class Allan M. Cundanga Espiritu of Oxnard, California was born in the Philippines, in 1977, the eldest of three boys and his parents moved to California in 1981. He graduated from Channel Islands High School in 1995 where he played junior varsity football. He loved math and sports, especially boxing and football. After a year at Oxnard College he entertained the idea of becoming a dentist, but he enlisted in the United States Navy. A petty officer second class, he served as a hospital corpsman assigned to a U.S. Marine division. Before returning to combat he spent most of the summer teaching his daughters to ride their bikes. And he was very involved with the kids’ schoolwork. Whenever his children got awards at school, he always made time to attend the ceremonies, no matter what was going on at work. At his job, he passed over safer duties for front line work with a bomb squad. He died during his second tour of duty in Iraq from an improvised explosive device while conducting combat operations in the vicinity of Ar Ramadi. He was 28. He is survived by two daughters, Alissa and Melanie, from a first marriage, and a stepdaughter, Alexy.
Navy
2nd Force Service Support Group (Forward)
II Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward)
Burial is at Ivy Lawn Memorial Park in Ventura, California
The Petty Officer 2nd Class Allan Mark Cundanga Espiritu by Freedom Remembered, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
