Love It or Hate It, Parade Stirred Public

The Patriot missile that anchored Sunday’s Welcome Home Desert Storm Parade was only a life-size model of the real thing, but the crowd did not know and probably would not have cared. Women blew kisses to it. Children screamed at it. Crowds roared.

The missile that knocked Saddam Hussein’s SCUDs out of the skies, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, is now a hit on the parade circuit.

“I do the Christmas parade,” said Johnny Grant, a vice president of KTLA and Hollywood’s honorary mayor. “And, I asked myself, what the hell am I going to put in the Santa position (at the end of the parade)? The Patriot, I told myself. We gotta get the Patriot. The Patriot’s a hero.”

The Patriot’s escort, Sgt. Jimmy Adams of the 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, was ushering the mock defensive missile through its third victory parade Sunday.

“America loves the Patriot,” Adams said. “Yesterday we were at a fashion mall in Orange County.” Adams said he has at least five more parades lined up during the next couple months, from Oklahoma City to Paris, France.

“I like the Patriot because it protects us and doesn’t kill people,” said Tamara Lapo, 26, who identified herself as a “struggling actress.”

The Patriot was not the only hardware star of the Hollywood parade. Almost anything that looked connected to Desert Storm met with roaring approval from hundreds of thousands who lined the streets to see in person what they had watched on TV.

“Heaven must be like this,” James McDonald, a 40-year-old disabled Vietnam veteran, said as a tank rounded the corner and the crowd roared.

“We liked the tanks and the bombers,” said Anthony Simental, 19, of Highland Park, who came with a group of eight cousins to support the troops--especially their four cousins in the service. “Bombers are bad-- they do the job.”

When the turret of another tank pivoted and lowered its huge gun at a man in the crowd, the man’s face lit up in a huge smile.

“I love it!” he said. He identified himself as Earl Krugel, a military veteran who was chairman of the Jewish Defense League of the San Fernando Valley.

There were loud cheers for the parade’s human components--thousands of troops marching down Sunset Boulevard in full battle gear.

The longer a soldier had been ignored, it seemed, the more applause he got. Korean veterans, from America’s “forgotten war,” got raves. Even the Salvation Army was cheered.

Robert Granado, who said he is an ex-gang member who could not join the service because he is a convicted felon, attended the parade carrying his 11-month-old son. He gave high fives to a dozen marching Vietnam veterans and said his three sons will serve in the Green Berets some day. His baby was dressed in camouflage gear complete with a green beret reading, “Special Troops.”

Many of those in attendance had either served in the military or wished they had. But others considered the parade--and particularly its weaponry--a frightening spectacle.

“I find this whole thing terrifying,” said Peter Sagar, 26, a former theater manager and Harvard University graduate. “People were cheering for these huge guns--guns that can kill thousands of people. The next time there’s a war, nobody is going to be able to say, ‘Yes, but why?’ ”

Michelle Levier, 70, a survivor of a World War II concentration camp, said: “When I was a kid, this is what I saw in Berlin. It’s like Nazism--the arrogance of power.”

Times staff writer Josh Meyer contributed to this story.