Clairemont Couple Create Bedsheet Cross to Show Mt. Soledad Solidarity

First let’s talk about who Hugh and Elaine Willner of Clairemont are not .

They are not members of the religious right wing. They are not people who enjoy playing politics (although they do volunteer their garage as a polling spot).

They are not belligerent toward people who do not believe in God or who believe in a God different than theirs. They’re not even actively religious (even though Hugh’s mother was a Protestant missionary).

Who, then, are they?

Elaine, 61, is a native San Diegan. Hugh, 62, spent 20 years in the Marine Corps (including wartime tours in Vietnam and Korea) and just retired after 20 more as a management employee for the Hilton hotel chain.

They are not lawyers, but the Willners do have a few ideas about right and wrong.

And what is right, they say, is that the Mt. Soledad cross, which was erected in 1913 and rededicated in 1954 as a war memorial to San Diegans killed in the service of their country, has earned the right to remain.

“God and country are important to a lot of people,” Elaine Willner explained.

To show support for the Mt. Soledad cross, the Willners decided to use the family’s canyon-rim lot (just east of Interstate 5, near Price Club) to display a cross of their own, using bedsheets.

Set off against the dark green of hillside ice plant, the Willners’ cross is visible to thousands of motorists on I-5.

“It’s not that we don’t see what the other side is saying about church-and-state,” Hugh Willner said quietly, “but we just feel the Mt. Soledad cross has been here so long, it ought to be preserved.”

The bedsheets to fashion the 60-foot-long cross were donated by the general manager of the San Diego Hilton. The owner of Pacific Drapery stitched them together.

To fasten the sheets to the ground, Hugh Willner got help from a neighbor across the street, a Navy captain.

If it loses its court fight with the tenacious litigators of the ACLU, the City Council will ask voters to approve the transfer of the Mt. Soledad property to a private group, thus rescuing the cross from being torn down.

If so, the Willners will use their hillside to put out a sign calling for a yes vote.

“It’s the right thing to do,” Hugh Willner said.

A Welfare Walkout

Welfare cutting may be politically popular with the masses, but it is less so with academe.

Three professors who were part of a nascent brainstorming group that met with mayoral candidate Susan Golding have dropped out due to her welfare-cutting plan (and, to a lesser extent, the leaked memo suggesting political motives).

Michael Parrish, a professor of history at UCSD and member of the County Water Authority, had organized the informal group with Golding’s approval.

The seven or so members had a two-hour session last month with County Supervisor Golding to discuss the border, infrastructure, the airport, transportation, etc.

But now three members have indicated they will not attend any further sessions:

William Deverell, assistant professor of history at UCSD; Steve Erie, associate professor of political science at UCSD, and Norton Long, professor emeritus of political science/urban studies at the University of Missouri, now a visiting lecturer at San Diego State.

“Striking people from the welfare rolls is a pretty cynical ploy for political gain,” Deverell said. “It stinks.”

(Larry Herzog of the Mexican-American studies program at San Diego State also bowed out, citing his workload. He declined to discuss the welfare plan.)

Golding stresses that the Parrish group is not an official advisory group, just one of several groups she is talking to. As for the dropout professors, she says:

“They should inform themselves about the reasons for the county (budget) deficit. If they’re saying you should never cut healthy, employable adults (from welfare), regardless of what else you have to cut, then I can’t agree with that.”

‘Sorry, I Gave at the Last Exit’

Muttering retreats.

* A guy is going window-to-window to panhandle rush-hour commuters stuck on an Interstate 5 off-ramp in Encinitas.

* “Dead Girls Don’t Tango,” a murder mystery shot in Encinitas, makes its world debut at 8 o’clock tonight at the La Paloma Theater in Encinitas.