PORTLAND, Ore. — In 1989, a young man named Martin Cerezo told his mother he wanted to join the United States Navy. He wanted to travel, to see the world, and to have some structure and discipline in his life.
Cheryle Cerezo-Gardiner said, she couldn’t agree more. But, she was worried about him.
“It was very scary to me,” she said, “And I told him that, and he said, ‘Mom, it’ll be fine, I’ll be fine. Nothing will happen.”
Not long after high school, Cerezo came out to her as gay.
“He just blurted it out,” she recalled. “My world kind of stopped in that moment. I didn’t know what to do except hug him and cry with him and tell him that I loved him.”
Though it didn’t happen right away, she fully embraced him as he was.
Credit: KGW
“I thought, you know, this child is the person I have always known. The only thing different is I have a new piece of information about him. He hasn’t changed. I just have learned something, that’s all,” Cerezo-Gardiner said. “It just seemed like such a natural way to feel about it that I really never looked back.”
Sitting in her Portland living room, she recalled his skill as a sailor — high marks, recommendations for both retention and promotion. Her son had been told that he had a fine career ahead of him in the Navy. She couldn’t be more proud.
“He was assigned to the U.S.S. Constellation, which is an aircraft carrier,” she explained. “They were making a trip from San Diego down around Cape Horn and then up to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard because they were doing a kind of an overhaul of the ship, and it was a long trip. It was several months and he loved it.”
But her son’s dreams would soon come crashing down.
“It was June of 1990, shortly after he had turned 20,” Cerezo-Gardiner said, “He called me, and he was crying. Someone had outed him as gay. He had been told that they had proof, and he had to write down what he knew. Name names, and the Navy would go easy on him.”
Credit: KGW
“He hesitated, and then he was told you’ve just been given a direct order, you will follow that order. So he wrote it all down, and the result was that a lot of men were discharged, some were sent to other commands, some were allowed to finish their enlistments if they were almost done, but Martin and several others were given an other than honorable discharge. At 20, my son was told he was not honorable.”
It hit him hard, breaking his heart — and his mother’s.
“The Navy not only didn’t go easy on him, they couldn’t have gone much worse.”
Though Cerezo lived a full life, this moment followed him. He couldn’t get certain jobs, nor could he get military benefits. The times he tried to start the paperwork to get his discharge upgraded, the painful trauma returned.
“He was 20 years old and being kicked out of the Navy again,” she said.
Then came liver problems, then worsening liver cancer. In 2020, doctors gave Cerezo the prognosis: he had only months to live.
Credit: KGW
Before he died, his mother promised him that his discharge status would be upgraded, and that he’d be buried with full military honors.
“I held his hand and I told him and he squeezed my hand,” she said. “On January 2, 2021, he died with his brothers and me by his bed.”
More than two years later, and after so many obstacles, Cerezo-Gardiner finally secured not only the honorable discharge for her son, but also the honor of being buried at Willamette National Cemetery.
“I did everything I could to get all the support I could, of the people I needed. I know that I have done what I promised him I would do as he lay dying. He was a good man. An honorable man.”
Cerezo-Gardiner said she believes her son’s health outcomes could have been much different, had he received care from the VA. She also said, her fight continues to help the many more — over 100,000 discharged for being who they are — get their full benefits and full honors for their service in the United States Military.