6 Tours of Duty, 2 Purple Hearts, 1 Sweet Ride

An auto body shop on a back street in Lemon Grove seems an unlikely spot for a 9/11 memorial to come to life. But that’s where Kano Williams is on a hot afternoon, grinning and admiring his just-finished “Purple Heart Magnum” at on Lemon Avenue.

Sinh Nguyen, the shop’s talented master fabricator, has just installed the hood on the 2006 Dodge Magnum, made some final adjustments, and is polishing the car’s surface to a glassy-perfect shine. Williams, a resident of Poway, couldn’t be more pleased. A Navy veteran with six tours of duty in Iraq to his credit, Williams has poured some of the most intense and harrowing moments of his life into this rolling tribute to the armed forces.

When the last detail is finished, he’s loading up the car in a trailer truck and heading off to a major car show in Florida—but not before he turns the key and listens to the engine purr like a kitten.

“I’m in love with it,” he says, grinning.

Meticulously airbrushed on the ebony paint of the car are the ghostly images of firefighters raising the flag at ground zero, soldiers carrying wounded brothers in arms, and a Navy corpsman kneeling in front of a memorial to two lost friends, head bowed, dog tags in hand. The images are all of real people.

And then there are the Purple Hearts.

But the car doesn’t just tell the story of events that unfolded in the 10 years since the Sept. 11 attacks led to the longest foreign conflict in U.S. history—a story that belongs to all of us—it also tells Williams’ personal story of service and lasting dedication to the country and his comrades.

Williams always knew he would join the military. His parents both made careers of the Army—his father is a Vietnam veteran. What he didn’t know is that at 28 he would be retired—and not by choice.

That’s where the Purple Hearts come in.

Trained as a reconnaissance corpsman, Williams was deployed with the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines in Iraq when he was injured during an RPG attack in 2004. Hit by shrapnel, he was able to stay with his unit and return to the States with them two months later.

It’s the head injury he suffered in 2006 that earned him a second Purple Heart, along with a discharge. A roadside bombing left him in a medically induced coma for 47 days, followed by a year and a half of rehab to learn everything new.

But what seems miles away is close to Williams’ heart, and what brought him to the shop for six weeks to work with Nguyen and Wess Smith, a custom airbrush artist who lives in La Mesa. It was Smith who culled through photographs of Williams' buddies to come up with the ultimate design of the car.

“I wanted to be involved as much as possible,” Williams says. “It means the world to me. It’s not just my life that I’m putting up there, it’s everybody I’ve served with. I have a huge connection with it. I didn’t want to just pay the money—it wouldn’t have any sentimental value to me. I wanted to actually be here watching it get done, helping it get done. ”

Since rehabilitating from his injury, Williams has started a nonprofit group called Vets Cruzin for a Cause, which raises money for organizations including the Wounded Warrior Project, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Military Order of the Purple Heart and the American Cancer Society (his mother, a 22-year Army veteran, died of pancreatic cancer in 2006). The group is sponsoring two upcoming car shows, and putting on a San Diego to Monterey, CA, cruise.

Nguyen understands the dedication.

“I feel very honored to be part of this project,” Sinful’s founder, master fabricator and painter said. “This is the one we feel so proud of. It has so much meaning to it.”

Williams says the car is a tribute to the post-9/11 conflict, though it could represent all conflicts in general.

“For me, driving in the car with the theme that it has—I feel like I’m driving with my friends—honestly, the friends that I lost,” Williams says. “That’s why I did it. It’s like they get to cruise with me.”

Friends like Jared Hubbard and Jeremiah Baro, Marines who both lost their lives in Iraq. They are pictured on the Magnum, as is Williams, who is seen kneeling in front of a memorial to the men and holding their dog tags.

“I would like people who see this to forget about the politics behind the war. I understand Republican and Democrat, but that doesn’t matter to me,” he said. “I want people to remember that regardless of the political situation there are still people who are overseas that are still giving their lives and still dying.

“I want people to remember the sacrifices ... we still need the support for the troops.”