Seeking a Park for a Hero : World War II: A Pacoima group is asking that a park be named after the first Angeleno to win a Medal of Honor in the war.

Forty years ago, a group of Pacoima residents asked the city of Los Angeles to name a new park in honor of Pfc. David M. Gonzales, a World War II hero from the community.

Instead, the city Parks and Recreation Commission named the facility the Pacoima Recreation Center and at its opening on June 1, 1950, dedicated a plaque at the entrance of the park in memory of Gonzales--the first Los Angeles resident to receive the Medal of Honor during the war.

Next week, Pacoima residents and members of Gonzales’ family will ask the commission to rename the recreation center in honor of the soldier, who died at the age of 21 in April, 1945, during the battle for Luzon in the Philippines. Gonzales rescued three companions who had been buried under debris after an enemy bomb attack before he was hit by enemy bullets.

“A lot of old-timers in the community thought the park already was named for him,” said Francisco Flores, 32, a Pacoima native who has led the drive to rename the center. The original name, he said, “got lost in the shuffle, somehow.”

Flores and others, including Gonzales’ son and two of his sisters, met Friday to discuss their presentation to the parks commission, which will meet at 6 p.m. Thursday at the center, 10943 Herrick Ave.

Flores, who has collected more than 2,000 signatures on petitions asking that the center be renamed, said he became interested in Gonzales’ story while a student at Cal State Northridge. He said his boxing coach recalled that in 1976, when residents held a meeting to discuss renaming the center for Martin Luther King Jr., an elderly woman told the gathering that the center already was named for Gonzales.

“I just want the young people who live in Pacoima to have a role model,” said Flores, who works at Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, a North Hollywood agency that helps aliens seeking amnesty.

While he was researching Gonzalez’s life in newspaper files, Flores said he found that many people named Gonzales had been in the papers because they had committed crimes. “When I came across this war hero, I thought, ‘Wow, here’s somebody we can really be proud of.’ I was really excited,” he said.

The Los Angeles Times carried accounts of Gonzales’ burial and heroics in the late 1940s and early 1950s. On Feb. 4, 1948, a Times article hailed Gonzales as the first “Angeleno to be awarded the congressional Medal of Honor in World War II.” Mayor Fletcher Bowron headed a list of dignitaries who paid tribute to Gonzales on the day of his burial.

“There was a big parade that day,” said Gonzales’ sister Carmen Amper, 65, of Mission Hills, who attended the funeral. “He was quite a guy. President Truman even sent a representative.”

She said her brother was the eldest of 14 children, all of whom were born in and grew up in Pacoima.

“He was proud to serve his country,” she said. “David used to play in the park before it was a park. He and some other boys made a baseball diamond using some chicken wire” to make a backstop and a fence.

A book about Latinos in World War II, “Among the Valiant” by Raul Moren, quotes Frank M. Reehoff, then a technical sergeant in Gonzales’ unit, as saying Gonzales’ action in rescuing his three fallen comrades was “the bravest thing I have ever seen a man do.”

“I’m happy they want to name the park after my father,” said David M. Gonzales Jr., 45, who was 1 year old when his father was killed. “We get kind of put down because we live in Pacoima. We want people to know good people come from Pacoima, too.”

Joseph C. Dickson, supervisor of the Pacoima Recreation Center, said he believes the commission will be receptive to the name change.

Some members of the Pacoima community who met with both Flores and members of the Gonzales family did not want the Pacoima name taken off the center. Flores and the Gonzales family agreed to propose the name the David M. Gonzales/Pacoima Recreation Center.