A Festive 4th

Southern Californians turned out under hazy skies to celebrate Independence Day with festive parades, fireworks displays and ceremonies honoring American veterans of the Persian Gulf and earlier wars.

In Santa Monica, fog shrouded the day’s first fireworks show, which attracted about 100,000 to the beach shortly before dawn. “All you could see were flashes in the sky,” said a disappointed Santa Monica lifeguard, Mickey Gallagher.

Other public fireworks displays were scheduled from Long Beach and Huntington Park to Pomona, La Mirada and Valencia.

In Montebello, where fireworks can be purchased legally, more than a dozen people crowded around one private stand in a parking lot. But business was down, salesman Joe Flores said. “The recession has hurt us some. They want to be more patriotic, but when it comes to seeing their money go up in smoke, it’s a different matter,” he said.

Among several ceremonies honoring American soldiers was a memorial for war dead at the Long Beach Promenade Amphitheater. “We were blessed with the fact not many died, although even one death is a tragedy,” Rabbi Sydney Guttman said of the Persian Gulf War.

Parades wound through El Sereno, Sunland, Pacific Palisades. In Long Beach, Gov. Pete Wilson and his wife rolled along the parade route in a 1929 Model A. Huntington Beach’s 87th annual Independence Day parade boasted veterans from World War II to Desert Storm. Desert Storm troops also starred in Rosemead’s first-ever Fourth of July parade.

Rosemead’s grand marshal was Spike Nasmyth, a Rosemead High School graduate and former Air Force captain who spent 6 1/2 years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. He and a dozen Desert Storm veterans joined local bands, churches and youth groups on the mile-long route through city streets.

The parade ended at Rosemead Park, where members of Monterey Park’s Ding How Square Dance Club performed for crowds of picnickers. The dancers, in cowboy shirts and flouncy dresses, are all originally from Taiwan, said Marian Lo. She and the others fell in love with this uniquely American form of dancing after moving here. “It’s very easy,” she said, “and so cheerful.”