Lawndale Youth Day Parade Draws 3,000

To the delight of their parents and friends, hundreds of South Bay children danced, sang and marched through the 30th annual Lawndale Youth Day Parade Saturday afternoon.

More than 3,000 people gathered under overcast skies to watch the parade, which started and ended its two-mile course at Alondra Park in the heart of Lawndale.

The event was scheduled Saturday to coincide with Arbor Day. In honor of the theme, members of Cub Scout Troop 3597 carried tiny saplings on their march, and the Lawndale Beautification Committee gave away about 200 packets of seedlings.

There were plenty of clowns and horses and dignitaries riding in old cars, but the civic-minded crowd saved most of its cheers for the Junior Graffiti Busters, a 2-year-old Lawndale youth group that paints out graffiti. It was their first year with the parade.

“Yeah, we need more of that,” Torrance mother Angelina Babick shouted and clapped from the sidelines as the Graffiti Busters, clad in bright pink T-shirts, marched by.

Leading the parade in a 1962 Buick Skylark bedecked with red, white and blue streamers was grand marshal Ron Kovic, the Vietnam veteran and peace activist whose life story is chronicled in the movie “Born on the Fourth of July.”

The last time Kovic led a parade was in 1968, he said, shortly after the former Marine returned from Vietnam with a war injury that left him paralyzed from the waist down. That parade was portrayed in a dramatic scene in the movie in which Kovic realized how little support there was at home for Vietnam veterans.

“I was a little bit apprehensive about coming because I haven’t done this for many, many years,” Kovic, a Redondo Beach resident, said. “There was so much pain involved in past parades, the memories of war and what the war did to me and others. But I’m participating in this one in the hope of peace and the hope for people to resolve their differences without going to war.”

Although he announced last month that he would not run for Congress against Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), Kovic said Saturday that he has not ruled out running for political office in the future.

“I wouldn’t want to say absolutely no to anything right now,” Kovic said. “But this race is not the time and the place for me to run.”

Although many adults in the audience expressed disappointment over Kovic’s decision not to run for office, such weighty matters were far from the minds of their children, who were clearly more interested in tossing footballs and munching free hot dogs.