Pedro R. Ortegón, of 1764 Golden Field Drive, Greenwood, IN died on the 21st of September of 2026. 

He is survived by Carla M. Ortegón, his wife of sixty-three years, his children Marta E. Ortegón of Greenwood, IN and Dana T. Ortegón, of Cambridge, MA, and his grandchildren Courtney Anne Hawk, Caleb Spilios Ortegón, Eden Francesca Spilios Ortegón and Emily Morgan Shannon Ortegón. 

When Franklin Roosevelt reached his hand to Winston Churchill in his defense of civilization from the Nazis, I realized, at age four, that I was an American. Years later I was confirmed in my knowledge when I learnt that America was an idea, and not the color of the map wherever my parents happened to be on the date of my birth. 

Official confirmation of my American-ness came in 1970 when I was in charge of the Orthopedic Service at Reynolds Army Hospital in Fort Sill, OK, when, as LTC ORTEGÓN, I was serving my country in the U. S. Army Medical Corps.The rest of my life is unremarkable. 

Since by now you may realize that I am writing my own obituary, I would beg from whoever may wish to remember me not to send either flowers or a check to the charity of my choice. They both will be wilted and gone in a few days. Instead, it would mean more to me that you would give yourself a gift. 

A gift to yourself, though, should be more lasting, and dearer to you, than flowers or checks to charities. After all, it is a gift you give to yourself. But, unlike perishable things, this gift will pass, intact and unchanged, to the children who grow under your influence, and to all successive generations till the last one of your kin becomes extinct. 

The gift to yourself consists in changing whichever behavioral traits you may have, in such a way that the day you yourself die, all will be able to sincerely say that you lived according to the dictum that all men are created equal, and that you did unto others as you would have liked others to do unto you