AFTER THE RIOTS: REBUILDING THE COMMUNITY : Mother’s Day Gestures Comfort a Wounded City

As Los Angeles’ early steps toward healing continued Sunday, the most traditional sources of comfort--the mothers--turned their attention toward those most in need, celebrating Mother’s Day by feeding, clothing, praying and reflecting.

They cooked for thousands of people at a downtown mission. They delivered flowers to mothers living in a high school gym, and they held a news conference to ask the National Guard to stay on to protect all children.

“We feel that the city still isn’t as safe as it should be, that people are still nervous and scared,” said Ricki Schermerhorn, who last week joined with four other women to form a group called Mothers of All Colors Unite. “If they take the Guard away, there’s just a lot of tired cops left out there.”

And some of the mothers who received the comfort extended Sunday were newly homeless, jobless or hungry.

Walkiria Martinez, 29, was left homeless when her West Adams apartment burned down during the riots. For the past eight days, she, her husband and their three young children have been sleeping on cots in an American Red Cross emergency shelter at Dorsey High School.

She said it lifted her spirits on Sunday when Rita Poorman of Pasadena brought bouquets of donated flowers to the shelter, even though Martinez had no vase to put them in.

“It makes me feel very good,” she said in Spanish.

Poorman said she decided to deliver the flowers Wednesday morning, after feeling distraught about the riots for days.

“I can’t change their lives,” she said. “I can’t give them what they lost, but I wanted to do something to make them feel special for at least a day.”

The giving and receiving was not limited to women, of course. The predominantly male Stentorians, an association of African-American firefighters, used their barbecuing skills to provide free meals to hundreds of people in neighborhoods just north of the riot’s epicenter at Florence and Normandie.

As a reminder that healing has only just begun, that the city remains edgy, the smoke from the Stentorians’ barbecue drew engines from a nearby fire station.

In fact, there were many reminders that the riots were not far in the past:

* In South-Central Los Angeles, Mother’s Day flower hawkers set up their buckets of carnations in front of burned-out buildings. In the rose garden at Exposition Park, families dressed in Sunday finery strolled past armed National Guard troops who continue to be deployed from the Coliseum.

* The riot-related arrest toll rose, with the total on Sunday reaching 18,807, nearly 2,000 more than on Friday. Most of the additional arrests were attributed to continuing police roundups of looted merchandise. Deaths remained unchanged at 58, and 2,383 injuries have been reported. Damage was estimated at $735 million in Los Angeles County.

* Like much of Los Angeles, the courts took their first breather over the weekend, but court personnel began bracing themselves to face the first crush of felony cases stemming from the riot starting Wednesday, when preliminary hearings for more than 2,000 offenders are scheduled to begin.

Early Sunday morning, parishioners at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church heard state Sen. Diane Watson say it was “so appropriate that we should begin the healing on this day” because mothers are the “catalysts, the connecting bond between the dream and the reality.” She spoke at the historic church where pleas for peace the evening of the King verdicts failed to calm the rioting.

Then Watson, like many other politicians in the wake of the riots, told the congregation that voters should “consider the past and commit to the future” by voting for her June 2 for Los Angeles County supervisor.

Her opponent, Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, adopted a similar theme in a speech at the McCarty Memorial Christian Church on West Adams Boulevard.

“We must rebuild the burned buildings, but most of all we must restructure the moral fiber of our community,” Burke said. “As mothers, we must pass on a greater moral commitment to the values that have made the African-American community strong.”

By midday, at the Fred Jordan Mission in the heart of Skid Row, mothers were on both sides of the serving line, where free meals were offered to both the homeless and riot victims.

Elizabeth Woods of Long Beach, a mother of two, said she has been volunteering at the mission for the past 10 years and came again this Mother’s Day to help serve chicken, green beans and fruit pie, despite her neighbors’ warnings that the area wasn’t safe because of the riots.

“I’m really thankful for what I have,” she said. “This is my way of showing how appreciative I am. I spend half the day helping others celebrate Mother’s Day, and the other half my family celebrates with me.”

But the violence did put a damper on the annual event, which usually is held in the middle of the street with live music, tables and meals for as many as 8,000. Police advised against such a mass gathering this year, saying “things were too volatile,” said Joe Jordan, the mission’s assistant executive director.

“They didn’t say we couldn’t do it,” Jordan said. “They said they don’t think it’s a good idea. So we called it off.”

Instead, the mission sent 6,500 hot meals to churches all over South Los Angeles and gave away 1,500 carry-out meals on Skid Row.

Mothers were ushered to the front of the line and received gift bags containing items such as perfume, false nails and costume jewelry, as gospel music blared from a speaker. The mothers ranged from a 15-year-old celebrating her first Mother’s Day to grandmothers.

Terry, 25, waiting near the front of the line with her 2-year-old son in her arms, said she and other homeless people felt the rioting more intensely than many others.

“This isn’t the most joyful Mother’s Day,” she said, asking that her last name not be used. “The rioting has taken away from it. We on the streets feel the effects directly. The tension is still here. We see all the burned out buildings.”

Behind one of the city’s first integrated fire stationsat Florence and Vernon avenues, dozens of off-duty firefighters belonging to the Stentorians joined members of African Youth in Action to cook chicken dinners, hot dogs and hamburgers on giant barbecues.

“We realize there is a great need for food,” said Los Angeles City Fire Capt. Ron Harvey. “In our hour of greatest need, we’re trying to step forward.”

A steady stream of people arrived throughout the day in cars, on bicycles and on foot for the meals that the group also served on Saturday. Nearly 2,000 meals were served during the two-day event. They sent people home with bags of groceries, recognizing the difficulty of shopping when many neighborhood stores are all but charred hulks.

Firefighter Ron Harmon said the two-day food giveaway was an effort to help put “the community’s lives back together.” He said the need to bring the community together clearly existed before the riots, but “we’ve all been shaken awake.”

Several people said they were grateful because they had no car, no transportation and no way to get food.

“Everybody is pulling together to help,” said area resident Marie Crenshaw. “I think it’s really essential. All the stores are burned down. There’s no place to go.”

In some cases, help was a little too abundant.

Back at Dorsey High, in the late afternoon, caterers Gary and Kathryn Butler were preparing a sit-down dinner for the 87 shelter residents in the school cafeteria. The tables were covered with white tablecloths, peach napkins and fresh-cut flowers. A gourmet meal was nearly ready.

“Being a mother, knowing Mother’s Day is so special, being in the situation that we’re in right now, I wanted to help the mothers,” Kathyrn Butler said.

Just minutes before the meal was to be served, caterer Janet Singleton showed up with spaghetti dinner for 200. Many of her clients had canceled luncheons in the wake of the riots, she said, so she had time to do something for those in need.

The Red Cross workers took the extra food anyway, saying they would refrigerate it for another meal, but later decied to give it to the Los Angeles Mission downtown.

Times staff writers Rose Kim, Paul Lieberman, Psyche Pascual, Jeffrey Rabin and George Ramos contributed to this story.

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