A Community Shows Its Colors in First Parade

It could have been a Veterans Day celebration in Iowa or anywhere else in America’s heartland.

But the scene Saturday was in the city of Los Angeles, albeit in Lake View Terrace, a community that takes pride in its small-town atmosphere and tries hard to keep it that way.

There were homemade cookies and lemonade, a small parade, awards, speeches, prayers and lots of applause, flag-waving, picture-taking and veterans swapping war stories.

“Is there a parade here?” asked a man who had driven up with his family shortly before the event began.

Told it was very small and not yet in sight, he answered, “This is a small community,” then parked and got out of his car.

The celebration was sponsored by the Lake View Terrace Garden Club, which, along with the Future Farmers of America of Polytechnic High School, maintains a flower garden at Foothill Boulevard and Osborne Street.

The quarter-mile-long parade, the community’s first, marched through Hansen Dam Park and was organized by garden club President Ralph Burns, a World War II veteran and 30-year Lake View Terrace resident.

The event had a definite improvisational feel--and the crowd of about 60 loved it.

A Dodge truck with a camper shell and loudspeakers blasted patriotic music because two high school bands “backed out last week,” Burns said.

Some horseback riders guiding their mounts along Foothill Boulevard paused to join the parade, which was led by uniformed equestrians from the San Fernando Rangers and Sidekicks.

The parade ended in a vacant lot where spectators and marchers pulled up folding chairs around a small stage and sound system that had been set up courtesy of the Parks and Recreation Department.

Then, Cile Borman, a local professional singer, belted out a rendition of “God Bless America,” prompting Burns to say, “This gal sings like Kate Smith.”

Featured speaker Winston S. Roche, 93, of North Hollywood, a World War I veteran, was introduced by Burns as “a real hero. He can get in the Oval Office any time he wants.”

Roche, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who earned a Purple Heart and France’s highest military honor, the Legion of Honor, told of joining the Army at 17 and recalled the horrors and the loneliness of war.

“When we came home, there were no hospitals to go to, no jobs,” he said. “We were given $60 and put on a train. We were on our own.”

But Roche, who was wounded three times, also won thunderous applause with a call for old-fashioned patriotism.

“We should teach our youngsters to honor our flag,” he said. “We should teach our youngsters to have the same morals we had when we were kids.”

Other veterans, including 81-year-old Geraldine Jones, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Women’s Army Corps, and Thomas McGowan, 71, who both served in the Battle of the Bulge, received standing ovations.

Upon hearing that McGowan was wounded in the famous World War II battle, Jones told him: “You could have been my patient.”