A funeral service with full military honors will be held for retired 1SG Peter I. Tejada, Jr., 81, of Lawton, Oklahoma, at 10:00 a.m. on Thursday at Blessed Sacrament Church, Lawton. Rev. James Stafford will officiate and COL Rodrigo A. Mariano, M.D. will present the eulogy. 1SG Tejada died on Good Friday in his family home. Viewing hours will be on Tuesday from noon until 9:00 p.m., with a rosary to be held at 7:00 p.m., and on Wednesday from 8:00 a.m. until 9:00 p.m., with a rosary to be held at 6:00 p.m., at the Becker Funeral home. After mass on Thursday, burial will be at the Post Cemetery, Ft. Sill, followed by a reception at the Blessed Sacrament Parish Hall. "Pete," as he was affectionately known, was a very popular figure to a broad and diverse constituency of area residents upon settling his family in Lawton in the early 1960's. He was a pillar of the Filipino American Association of Lawton Ft. Sill, an association known for its service to the larger Lawton community. Born in Bacolod City, the capital of Negros Occidental in the Philippines, Pete was the eldest of five surviving children of Pedro A. Tejada, Sr., a businessman, and his wife Estrella, a homemaker. Pete joined the U.S. Army in 1953 and served his country with love, loyalty, and duty. He served in the infantry and was also a paratrooper, with specializations as senior infantry sergeant, infantry operations, and Intel. He was a decorated war hero who served three tours of duty in Vietnam, where he was promoted to 1SG. His other overseas postings include the Korean DMZ, Greenland, Germany, and Panama. His numerous awards include: Bronze Star Medal, Air Medal (2 awards), National Defense Service Medal, Army Commendation Medal, Five Overseas Service Bars, Combat Infantryman Badge, Expert Qualification Badge Rifle, Republic of Vietnam Staff Service Medal (Second Class), Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross with Palm, National Defense Service Medal (First Oak Leaf Cluster), Good Conduct Medal (Sixth Award), Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal, Army of Occupation Medal, Vietnam Service Medal. After his 22 years in the military, Pete attended Cameron University on the GI Bill, where he majored in criminal investigation. He was then hired at the new Goodyear plant in 1979, where he worked in Quality Assurance and Security. He retired from Goodyear in 1991, but his former colleagues continued to regard him as a lifelong member of the Goodyear family. Pete's love of life and his friendliness, kindness, and common touch were constant and contagious. He was the family archivist who loved to take pictures and to have his photograph taken with family and friends. Pete was an avid fisherman, an enthusiastic jitterbug dancer, and a musician who learned to play the ukulele and guitar as a young soldier with his brothers-in-arms. After retirement, he took piano lessons as a student of the Kawasaki method and passed his love of music to his artistic family. Pete was a loving and devoted husband, father, and grandfather, a patriot whose extremely close-knit family carries on his legacy. He is survived by his wife of 53 years, Mary D. Tejada, a former educator in the Philippines and one of the first volunteers in the Catholic church's humanitarian resettlement of Vietnamese refugees in Oklahoma in the 1970's and 1980's; his three daughters, Audrey Dolar Tejada, a past elected Cornell University Trustee and Harvard University Administrative Fellow, an innovator who created StrangeTango.com: Life as Art, the first literary and conceptual art installation in cyberspace, Glynis D. Tejada, Barnard College/Columbia University, world traveler and writer, and Piere Angeli Tejada Mariano, Cornell University Bachelor of Arts, Cornell National Scholar, formerly of Lotus Development Corporation/IBM; son-in-laws Joseph Yu, a longtime employee and guru at Lotus Development Corporation/IBM in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and COL Rodrigo A. Mariano, M.D., Fellow of the American College of Internal Medicine Physicians; and two beloved grandchildren, Mary Ciara Tejada Mariano and Rohan Rodrigo Tejada Mariano. In lieu of flowers, our family requests that memorial contributions in our father's honor be made to Blessed Sacrament Church or St. Mary's Catholic School c/o Blessed Sacrament Church, Attn: Rev. Joseph R. Ross, Corner of 7th and Gore, P.O. Box 2546, Lawton, OK 73502.