Ten years ago, life pivoted for Amy Vazquez.
The Jacksonville native’s 25-year-old son, Marine Cpl. Joshua Watkins, was killed in action in Iraq. In his second tour, he was nine days from returning to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.
“When I lost Joshua, a lot changed. I changed,” said Vazquez, who “after a lot of crying” had fully supported her only child when he decided to enlist in the infantry.
“I’m different,” she said.
The mortgage-industry veteran, now 61, lost the drive that had propelled her from her initial college interest in Broadway stardom to a degree in criminal justice and then to a financial career that she found by chance but kept by choice.
Through the years she worked at several mortgage companies in myriad roles and had closed out an office for one in June 2006.
On Oct. 21 that year, Watkins died. He was caught in an enemy ambush and “went down firing,” she said.
“It took my breath away for a couple of months,” Vazquez said.
Soon after, as she was arranging a reverse mortgage for her mother, the broker asked her to join his business. In January 2007, she began there as a loan officer.
“That was a place God wanted me to be for a while,” Vazquez said, realizing that “people come into your life for a reason.”
Her boss told her he didn’t know how she got up in the morning every day, “but you do the best you can and that’s fine with me.”
“He was such a sweet, sweet-hearted man,” Vazquez said.
By then, the financial crisis and recession had set in and her job came to an end.
Through word-of-mouth, Mark Johnson, president of Florida Capital Bank, heard about Vazquez and called.
That was May 2008. She no longer was interested in management or sales — both demanding and high-stress positions. She just wanted to make a contribution.
Johnson brought her in and there she remains, eight years later. She is a secondary marketing analyst.
“It was a nice environment. I got to be part of a community,” said Vazquez, who considers herself the “pricing queen” because she monitors the bond market and recommends pricing adjustments.
Plus, Johnson and Florida Capital support the scholarship program that Vazquez set up soon after her son died.
This year, Florida Capital put its resources behind the 10th Josh Watkins Memorial Tennis Tournament held every Veterans Day weekend at the Williams Family YMCA.
Watkins had grown up in Mandarin and at the Y, even working there as a teenager through early college.
The tournament supports both the Y and the Marine Corporal Joshua C. Watkins Memorial Endowed Scholarship at the University of North Florida.
Vazquez and her brother, David Tillis, set up the scholarship program in 2007 to assist students in the armed forces, honorably discharged or in ROTC programs.
Watkins studied building construction management at UNF, which he attended for three years before he enlisted.
He had promised his mother he would complete his degree upon his return.
Vazquez considers the scholarship a way to help other military students complete theirs in any discipline.
A journey of support
Creation of that scholarship and the tournament also came from people who appeared for a reason.
When Watkins was killed, a friend of Vazquez with the Jacksonville chapter of the Mortgage Bankers Association quickly opened an account for the Joshua Watkins College Fund to honor him.
Vazquez wanted to earmark it to help the baby of Watkins’ best friend because he had wanted to ensure a college education for the little boy, his godson.
She then met with the MBA chapter, whose keynote speaker was a PGA Tour executive. He heard her talk about her son and donated $10,000.
That’s when she and Tillis “had an epiphany” and created the scholarship fund at UNF for military personnel. (Vazquez personally set up a college fund that she maintains to take care of the boy’s education.)
Area philanthropist Robert Jacoby read about the UNF scholarship fund and began donating to it.
He said he was an only child and at the age of 17 enlisted during World War II, breaking his mother’s heart. He wanted to help Vazquez — and still does.
Florida Capital also has supported the association’s golf tournament, which contributed to the scholarship fund.
“We want from zero to almost $300,000,” Vazquez said last week.
Early on, proceeds from donations were given as scholarships as she seeded the endowment. UNF said the endowment fund has grown to more than $275,000.
The Y became involved soon after Watkins died.
Vazquez’s best friend and former tennis partner took the idea for a tournament to Y management and the event took shape. The Veterans Day weekend tournament has expanded to Thursday and Friday nights and all day Saturday and Sunday.
Vazquez doesn’t play now, but she did the first year. She had played competitively at the Y for 10 years, having gone from “never having held a racquet to the high B team.”
This year’s “Josh Tournament” yielded about $6,500 each for the Y and the scholarship.
“It’s been a journey for something I thought was supposed to be for one little boy,” she said.
Vazquez said her co-workers and Johnson are strong supporters. “I am very blessed,” she said.
She considers her workplace as a family and an extension of her personal life.
From musical to financial numbers
Vazquez, Tillis and their oldest brother, Wayne “Biff,” grew up in rural Mandarin “when we were considered rednecks.” She was the youngest. Her mother divorced when Vazquez was 5 years old.
They lived on 12 acres and young Amy had two horses, saddling up to mosey to the soda fountain for a milkshake.
Both of her horses were ornery, she said. One would head for the lowest tree branches when he tired of her.
The family did chores, gathered eggs, milked cows and delivered eggs and milk “from the back of my brother’s motorcycle.”
They would camp out in the rustic yard.
“It was a pretty cool childhood,” she said.
At 15, Vazquez started clerking at the Mandarin Supermarket and then worked part-time at Publix along University Boulevard while attending Wolfson High School.
After graduation in 1973, she headed to North Florida Junior College in Madison to study music, with a lot of passion but not a lot of training.
While she was pure college prep at Wolfson, she had performed — successfully — in musical comedy at the Mandarin Community Club.
As a junior, she portrayed burlesque entertainer Gypsy Rose Lee of “Let Me Entertain You” fame.
The family Vazquez babysat for was sitting behind her mother at the performance. The woman leaned over to her husband and proclaimed that “she’s not babysitting for us anymore.”
While Vazquez went on to become Miss North Florida Junior College, she opted not to compete for Miss Florida because she said she lacked the self-esteem.
She also gave up the pursuit of a musical career because she told herself, “Girl, you’re going to starve to death.”
Vazquez had been volunteering with underprivileged children and realized she had a heart for young people. She saw the differences in how children were raised.
She transferred to Valdosta State University for a degree in criminal justice, returning to Jacksonville after graduation in 1978.
But that career didn’t suit her either. She realized she couldn’t leave the issues at the door.
As she was pondering a job, a friend of her mother heard of an opening as a word processor in the mortgage business at Duval Federal Savings and Loan.
That was before she realized there was a “t” in mortgage, she said.
The fluke, as she calls it, led to an almost 40-year career.
Living for freedom
Every day she wears her son’s dog tags to keep him close.
Vazquez recalls how profoundly 9/11 affected him, leading to his enlistment at age 23.
She remembers she was told he volunteered for the last mission and was the only one shot during the ambush outside Fallujah.
He joked a little as he was prepped for surgery and evacuated by helicopter to Balad Air Base.
Nobody realized how badly he was hurt, having been struck in his side because his gear had no side panel.
Watkins died on the operating table.
Vazquez recalls the last conversation she had with him, nine or 10 days before he was to return to the U.S.
Marines, he told her, know they have a job to do. He never wanted to fight the war on American soil, which is why he was fighting it in Iraq.
“Other than I love you, that’s the last thing he said to me,” she said.
He attained the rank of corporal two months before his death.
Vazquez vows she will never be complacent about the men and women fighting for the freedom of the U.S.
Whenever possible, she thanks veterans for their service — shaking their hand, looking them in the eye and sometimes eliciting a tear.
“Till the day I die, I will support the military,” she said.
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