Ex-Sailor Takes Fight for Benefits to the Streets : Veterans: World War II seaman takes up a South-Central corner to plot his legal assault on the VA. But his camp could be threatened when a new hotel opens across the street.

Is it taps for Camp Colquitt?

For nearly four years, the military fort-like encampment at Central Avenue and 42nd Place in South-Central Los Angeles has made passers-by snap to attention.

They stare at the American flag that whips from a pole over the camp’s rickety headquarters building.

They watch as the compound’s officer-in-charge cooks his meals over a wood fire in a shallow foxhole a few steps from the busy intersection.

And they study the billboards painted on the wooden wall that wraps around most of the grounds. The signs tell of veterans’ benefits and government bureaucracy. They are posted next to a 10-foot-tall tote board--the kind used to gauge the progress of fund-raising campaigns--and alongside a painted picture of a youthful-looking man in a Navy uniform.

The hand-drawn portrait is of John O. Colquitt. The make-believe bivouac, built upon a borrowed lot, is Colquitt’s home.

It is also the staging area for what he considers the last battle of World War II.

Colquitt asserts he has suffered for 42 years from a nervous disorder brought on by South Pacific combat. But he says that, despite numerous claims and one ill-fated lawsuit, he has been unable to persuade the government that it owes him compensation.

So he has taken his case to Central Avenue.

Each day, Colquitt, now 69 and white-haired, stands near the compound’s gate and chats with pedestrians. He invites them in to examine large, hand-painted copies of military documents that he says prove his case against the Veterans Administration.

His dream, he says, is to raise money to haul the government into court. He says he is certain that a jury of his peers will agree that faceless federal officials have denied him his rights.

Colquitt sometimes puts a painted tin can with a coin slot cut through its top on a shelf labeled “Justice Table” and waits for donations. But there are few gifts of cash from his neighbors in one of Los Angeles’ most impoverished communities. After nearly four years, the red-painted base to Colquitt’s thermometer-shaped donation tally board hasn’t budged an inch.

“Maybe it’s time to move and take the crusade across the United States,” Colquitt said the other day. “People here are very nice to me. But this area’s the poorest in the city.”

In fact, the closure of Camp Colquitt could come sooner than its founder expects.

Across 42nd Place, workers are finishing a $3-million project that is turning an abandoned four-story hotel into a rent-subsidized apartment complex for low-income residents.

Los Angeles officials hope to reopen the refurbished Dunbar Hotel next month. Its 72 new efficiency units will be above an Art Deco lobby that has been restored to much of its original 1928 elegance. In its heyday, the Dunbar--the nation’s first hotel built for blacks--was a centerpiece for black Los Angeles society as well as a haven for black travelers who were turned away from white hotels.

But project planners warn that the hotel’s new tenants may not be happy about Camp Colquitt. From their new apartment windows, many will have an unobstructed view of Colquitt, his foxhole kitchen and his billboards.

“He’s tried to make the camp as attractive as he can, given the materials at hand,” said Channa Grace, the Dunbar’s project manager. “But it’s something that will unfold when people move in here.”

Phil Meyerson, a rehabilitation construction specialist with the city’s Community Development Department, said the ex-sailor should quit his camp and move into one of the Dunbar’s units. So far, 33 other applicants have applied to be tenants.

Meyerson said that, despite the worthiness of its cause, Camp Colquitt doesn’t “exactly help the neighborhood.”

Others in the Central Avenue business district privately agree.

Most merchants, however, have adopted a live-and-let-live attitude about the encampment, which covers the site of a 1915 storefront that housed a liquor store, cafe and billiard parlor before it was torn down in the 1970s.

“He believes in what he’s doing,” said Annie Gill, who has operated a nearby dry-cleaning business since 1953. “People notice the camp. But so many, many people here have personal problems. . . . I’m surprised he’s been able to stay as long as he has.”

Residents said neighborhood gang members leave Colquitt alone. Graffiti rarely show up on his billboards.

“He talks to the kids and tries to show them that you can do constructive things instead of writing on fences,” said Mark Thomas, who lives a block away.

Neighbor Rudy Graham said most residents feel Colquitt’s campaign is just. “The fact that he can live in the open in this type of neighborhood says something,” Graham said. “Most people here want iron fences and bars on their windows.”

Colquitt said that what few problems the camp has are rooted in officialdom.

Shortly after he first pulled up to the lot in 1986 in a 15-year-old Ford station wagon, police tried to make him leave by accusing him of trespassing, he said. After that, fire officials complained that he was creating a fire hazard by cooking his dinners of beef stew and chicken on a small metal barbecue.

Colquitt eventually built a concrete cooking fireplace and dug a small sitting area next to it. His foxhole, as he calls it, shields him from the wind.

The camp’s headquarters shack was constructed around the old station wagon from scrap lumber and plywood. It is equipped with a built-in desk, skylight and window, and with a kerosene heater and lamps. Colquitt fills water jugs at a neighbor’s spigot and heats bath water over his fireplace.

Although the camp falls short of city standards, building inspectors have looked the other way.

“We only act on complaints, and we haven’t received any complaints on him,” said Jim Carney, a chief city building inspector.

Two Anaheim men listed on county records as the owners of the lot could not be reached for comment. But Colquitt said they have not complained about the camp, either.

“They came by the second year I was here,” Colquitt said. “They said I have a good cause. They said I could stay since I wasn’t selling anything.”

Colquitt acknowledges that he has failed to sell the Veterans Administration on the merits of his case.

He claims that the agency has ignored documents in his file that show he suffered a nervous breakdown in 1946 while on Navy duty. He blamed the breakdown on stress caused by a lack of leave, and on being under heavy fire while ferrying men and equipment on landing craft during the invasion of eight South Pacific islands.

“We lost 80 men one time on the ship. On one invasion they shot us up so bad there was a pile of us 5 feet high. . . . The guy on top of me was as dead as a mackerel. On Guam, something in me just snapped,” he said.

He has remained partially disabled and unable to work regularly since then, he said. Repeated efforts to claim government benefits have failed, and government lawyers got a 1986 lawsuit over his benefits dismissed before it went to trial, he said.

VA officials say their records indicate that Colquitt applied for benefits once, in 1974. The claim was rejected that same year.

“He had filed a claim for a nervous condition, but there was nothing in his military record that showed, apparently, he had a nervous condition while in the service,” said Leon Goss, a VA veterans services officer in Los Angeles. “As far as we know, we haven’t heard from him since 1974.”

That explanation angered Colquitt. “I’ve been over and over and over it with them. I’ve been through the mill with them. I don’t trust them. They’ve damn near destroyed this old man.”

He said his own copies of his VA records--obtained while drawing up his 1986 lawsuit--contain evidence of his treatment for nervousness while in the Navy.

“I got an honorable discharge, but they won’t honor me,” Colquitt said, his voice rising. “That’s why I started this camp. This isn’t the life style I prefer. But it’s the only way I can fight for myself.”

As he spoke, a group of neighborhood children stopped outside the Camp Colquitt gate and waved shyly to the man inside. Colquitt relaxed slightly. Then he grinned a toothless smile and waved back.

“No matter what happens, I’m already a winner,” he said. “I’m a winner from meeting the people who pass by here.”