John Munos (who was killed at 23 in the Korean War in August 1951) and his Army medals
This Veterans Day weekend, the Moline-based Fourth Wall Films – run by the extraordinary husband-and-wife team of Kelly and Tammy Rundle – will premiere the latest documentary in the planned nine-part, short-film Hero Street series.
Its fifth entry, and final tale chronologically, is The Last to Fall From Hero Street, which will premiere Saturday, November 8, on the Putnam Museum & Science Center's National Geographic Giant Screen Theater. A Q&A with film participants will follow the 2 p.m. screening, and this special event sponsored by Jennie's Boxcar and the Beiderbecke Inn will feature music, a tribute to our veterans, and an encore screening of the Rundles' documentary short A Bridge Too Far from Hero Street.
Only a block-and-a-half long, Second Street in Silvis, Illinois, lost six young men in World War II and two in the Korean War, accruing more war losses than any other street in America. More than 100 service members have come from Hero Street USA (as Second Street is now known) since Mexican-American immigrants settled there in 1929.
The Hero Street series explores the compelling true story of eight Mexican-American heroes from Hero Street: Tony Pompa, Frank Sandoval, William Sandoval, Joseph Sandoval, Claro Solis, Peter Masias, Joseph Gomez, and The Last to Fall's subject John S. Muños.
Muños was one of 12 siblings (one of six in his family who survived to adulthood), and was born in a Silvis boxcar in 1928. John married his sweetheart, Mary Bessera, three months before he entered the Army on January 15, 1951. A furlough allowed him to visit his wife and family one last time before deployment.
“The last time I saw him, he came to say goodbye, and I was pregnant with my fourth child,” Mary Muños Ramirez, 95, said of her brother in the film. “I sent him a picture of my new baby boy. I got the letter and picture back. He had already been killed.”
John served in the Korean War with Company F of the 38th Regimental Combat Team, Second Infantry Division. On August 27, 1951, at age 23, he was among 740 Americans killed in the Battle of Bloody Ridge. His body was never recovered.
“My great-uncle John was in the thick of things when he died,” said Brian Muños, who is retired from the Navy. “He was in a very tough place. But he served with distinction. He gave his very, very best.
“I’m just one of many that served from that street,” Brian continued. “And eight didn’t make it. And we memorialize that. But we remember them, their families, and their sacrifice. And the story has to go on.”
Fifty-eight-year-old Brian Muños (who now works for the Davenport aeronautical engineering firm Eaton) served in the Navy from 1985 to 2005. Brian’s grandfather Joe Muños was in the Navy during World War II, and many members of the Muños family also served their country.
“He was obviously a good-looking man,” Brian, who was interviewed for the new film, said recently of John. “Everybody believed he belonged in Hollywood. He was very athletic. He had a very calm and quiet personality – for a Muños. We’re pretty loud and boisterous.
“My grandfather was very patriotic,” Brian added, noting the documentaries reveal information he hadn’t known before. “To see all the family stories being told, to see our story told … . It’s just amazing to have that privilege, to have that carried forward.”
Of the Rundles, he said: “For those two to continue pursuing our story and our legacy is so dynamic. As a family, we didn’t pass down the stories that should have been passed down, our grandparents were way more tight-lipped. They just wanted the best for their children, the best for their family. They didn’t speak a lot.
“For Kelly and Tammy and Fourth Wall Films to do the research and the digging, and the conversations they had to put these films together, it’s just an honor, an absolute privilege to have our story continue. I could never thank them enough.”
Local station WQAD-TV is airing the first four completed Hero Street films, each about a half-hour long, on Sunday, November 2: Riding the Rails to Hero Street at 1 p.m.; Letters Home to Hero Street (about Frank Sandoval) at 1:30 p.m.; A Bridge Too Far from Hero Street (about William Sandoval) at 4 p.m.; and An Infantryman from Hero Street (about Joseph Sandoval) at 4:30 p.m.
Series Launched in 2012
Riding the Rails, which is chiefly about Mexican immigration to Silvis, is the prologue to the whole story, and the Rundles were first inspired to produce their series at a Memorial Day 2012 event at Hero Street. Having no funding for the project at that point, the filmmakers initially proposed a full-length feature on all eight heroes that didn't come to pass.
In the summer of 2015, however, WQPT-TV obtained a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, and the station went on to co-produce Letters Home From Hero Street. Fourth Wall Films and WQPT were jointly nominated for a Mid-America Emmy Award for that documentary.
The Rundles then decided to approach the series as episodic, with each half-hour film on each hero, and An Infantryman From Hero Street was also nominated for an Emmy.
There are interview subjects in the new film who have been in past documentaries about the individual heroes, including authors Marc Wilson (2009's Hero Street USA) and Carlos Harrison (2014's The Ghosts of Hero Street).
Interviewee Nellie Terronez Muños, meanwhile, was 99 years old when the Rundles spoke to her in 2022 for The Last to Fall from Hero Street. (John Muños was a brother of her husband Joe.) Nellie passed away on January 26, 2024 at 100, leaving 18 grandchildren, 36 great-grandchildren, and 32 great-great-grandchildren. The new doc profiles her brother-in-law, starting with the Muños family’s journey from Mexico as they fled the Revolution. John and Joe’s father, Isabel, worked in the rail yards in Silvis, and his mother, Victoria, made their home in a boxcar provided by the railroad.
The families of the boxcar village experienced both acceptance and discrimination in their new community. At the time of the Great Depression, the families living in the railroad village were moved to Second Street in Silvis, a former dumpsite.
“When my brother Joe was mayor, the street was all dirt,” Nellie recalled in a May 2023 interview for WHBF-TV. “When it used to rain, it used to make ditches. He’s the one that paved the Fourth Street, Third Street, and here.”
Rufina Sandoval Guerrero (William Sandoval's sister, born in a boxcar and grew up on Hero Street) will attend the November 8 Putnam premiere, and then celebrate her 101st birthday on November 14.
“You feel like they’re your great-grandparents,” Tammy Rundle said of specific interviewees. “You sit down and listen to their stories, and are inspired by them.”
“These older folks really have made a lifelong effort to make sure the young man they’re connected to is remembered,” Kelly added.
“With John’s story, a lot of it is the legacy,” Tammy said. “He’s our end hero, and there’s a lot of story after him.
“Each of the episodes focus on the individual heroes,” Tammy said. “But we’re also weaving, through the stories, information about Hero Street, so all the films have something different to add. At the end of the series, you’ll have a pretty complete picture of Hero Street.”
Each episode also provides historical context for each hero’s saga, such as detail on the Korean War for Muños and Joe Gomez.
“They were eager to behave as everyone else did, to participate as American citizens,” Kelly said. “There’s a romantic idea of serving in a wartime situation that usually dissolves in training or in combat. John’s story, in a sense, begins when he's a young person, dreaming about going off to war, even though he already saw six young men [from his street] come back in coffins. Other friends his age were a little disappointed that they missed the war.”
As for “Bloody Ridge,” said Kelly, it was “a hill of no particular significance. According to witnesses, [John] took a direct hit, and that’s why there was no body to recover. Willie Sandoval’s body wasn’t recovered either.
“These are stories about people who are normally forgotten,” he added. “They’re about the ordinary soldier.”
The documentary shorts, Kelly said, “are unique to each of these eight young men, but there’s a universal quality about them. Veterans confirm to us that the experiences that the Hero Street eight had are similar to their experiences.”
Tammy said she was drawn to John’s love story with Mary, the pair having gotten married in October of 1950 before he was deployed to Korea in January. “He wants some time with her before he goes off to war. They had a very short time together.
“It’s a labor of love for us – something that we’re very committed to seeing through,” Tammy said of the series, noting their interview subjects feel like family. “It’s important to us personally to do this, to honor these guys.”
John Muños entered the Army in January 1951, and after his death seven months later, his widow Mary remarried a man named Joseph Gomez in 1959, and their union lasted 55 years. She died at 94 on Jan. 26, 2024 (the exact same day as Nellie Munos), and was not interviewed for the series. Kelly isn’t sure if her late husband was related to the Joe Gomez who died in Korea.
There are 23 houses on Hero Street that were built from former boxcars, including the Muños home.
Series Continues in 2026
Fourth Wall Films' A World Away from Hero Street, about Joseph Gomez, is slated for release in the fall of 2026.
“The films can be viewed independently, or as a series,” Kelly said. “It’s not the same situation as with some series, where you watch one episode and you don’t know what’s going on. There’s enough here so people will feel like they’ve seen a complete story, and they’re not missing anything.”
Remaining episodes will also address how Second Street was renamed Hero Street (in 1967), the development of Hero Street Memorial Park, and the Hero Street Monument.
Fundraising, Kelly said, is harder now than it was, given federal cuts to arts and humanities funding. For the funds that are left, “there are a lot of people like us competing. It’s just too many people going after too few resources.”
However, Kelly added, the state and federal grants were a “stamp of approval” to help raise private dollars.
The Last to Fall from Hero Street will be screened at the Putnam Museum & Science Center (1717 West 12th Street, Davenport IA) on November 8, admission to the 2 p.m. showing and subsequent Q&A is $7-9, and more information and tickets are available by calling (563)324-1933 and visiting Putnam.org.
Fourth Wall Films is a five-time Emmy Award winning independent film and video production company formerly located in Los Angeles, and now based in Moline. For more information, visit FourthWallFilms.com.
Truth First Film Alliance, Inc. serves as the fiscal sponsor for the Hero Street documentary series project. To donate, and for more information on the Hero Street documentaries, visit Hero Street Film Series.
