SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA AND THE PERSIAN GULF CRISIS : Place to Reflect on War’s Real Cost

On Monday, as the nation faced a deadline for war, Jerry Bray made a patriotic pilgrimage of sorts. With an American flag bandanna on his head and a black leather jacket on his back, the Canoga Park resident drove his motorcycle to the Los Angeles National Cemetery in Westwood, a place where soldiers are buried.

There, the 48-year-old former Ohio National Guardsman wandered amid the chalk-white marble grave markers that march along the grassy hillsides in precise military formation. He had come to ponder world events. The bandanna, he said, was his personal statement in support of his country:

“I’m an American and I believe in freedom. I grew up in an era when it was good to be patriotic. . . . I’m just down here today to reflect on the whole thing.”

As the nation stands divided over the best course of action, so too did the handful of people who could be found Monday along the winding paths of the century-old cemetery. They addressed, in respectfully quiet voices, questions and points of contention that rage loudly across the land on what might be the brink of war.

“I identify with every boy that’s over there,” said 71-year-old Shirley Van Dine, whose nephew, Terry Holloway, was killed in March, 1989, during an Army helicopter accident in Arizona. “I don’t think I ever realized until I lost Terry just how devastating it is to lose a young person like that.

“I would prefer that they try the sanctions so that no one loses a son, a nephew or a husband. Even one life is too precious to lose.”

Some people came to the cemetery Monday as a matter of routine. Others came hoping the venue might help them sort their thoughts.

A jogger who usually takes her midday run on the track at nearby UCLA said she had chosen to run in the cemetery instead, looking for peaceful contemplation.

“It’s been on my mind,” said the jogger, Tina Rubien. “It’s a very scary thing.”

An exterminator, hired by the cemetery to check for gophers and other rodents, said Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s aggression against Kuwait must be stopped.

“You’ve got to stop him somewhere,” was the logic of Paul Black, owner of California Agri-Control Inc.

A mourner whose husband’s ashes were buried at the cemetery just last week said that the World War II veteran would not have wanted his country to be drawn into another war.

“We have grandchildren who are of military age,” Valeria McCray said, “and we certainly don’t want to see them have to go.”

Larry Unzueta, a retired cemetery employee who had come to visit a former co-worker, feared a heavy loss of life.

“Somebody’s going to get killed,” he said.

Bray, the former National Guardsman, said America has no choice but to fight Iraq, adding that it would be better now than later. Though he did not go to the cemetery looking for answers, his visit did raise a question:

“I was just thinking,” he said, gesturing toward the rows of gravestones, “with everything going on, if these guys were alive, what would they be thinking?”

All around him, spread across 114 acres that are dotted with camphor trees, palms, eucalyptus and magnolias, were white tombstones marking the graves of veterans of every U.S. military conflict since the Civil War. The Indian Wars. The Boxer Rebellion. The Spanish-American War. World Wars I and II. Two conflicts in Korea. And Vietnam. In all, it holds the remains of 79,000 members of the military and their families.

No matter what happens in the Persian Gulf during the next few days or weeks, the ranks of the dead at the Westwood cemetery will not grow much. The graveyard, one of five national cemeteries in California, has been on “closed status” since the 1970s, accepting only cremated remains.

It has no more room for graves.