Fun in the Sun : Holiday: The gloomy Memorial Day weekend skies clear, luring crowds to the shore. Despite the nice weather, some still complain about a lack of waves.
Although Mother Nature tried hard to slow down the party, Ventura County residents took to the great outdoors Sunday in pursuit of traditional and not-so-traditional means of celebrating the long Memorial Day weekend.
Thick clouds early in the day threatened that the weather might not cooperate with revelers. But when the gray skies cleared, locals took to the outdoors with vigor.
“This has been real nice, but I wish it had been sunny,” Sylmar resident Danny Lerman said.
Lerman and about 10 friends had convened at McGrath State Beach Friday afternoon, hoping for a long, leisurely and sun-drenched weekend. While they got less sun than hoped for, their real weather concern lay elsewhere.
“The sun isn’t the real problem,” said Chatsworth resident Clive Mangum. “There’s been no waves. That’s what we needed.”
Oxnard resident Nicole Florio, who celebrated her 12th birthday at the campground with her mother, brother and a friend, wasn’t as picky. “We usually have my birthday party at home, so the weather didn’t bother us,” Nicole said as she ate a piece of leftover chocolate birthday cake.
“We just got out of the ocean.”
Although the emergence of the sun drew moderate to slightly heavy crowds to the beach, no incidents or accidents required rescues, lifeguard George Kabris said.
“So far, it’s just been a pretty quiet weekend with a lot of people coming out and enjoying the beaches,” Kabris said.
The gloomier weather early Sunday seemed unimportant to family members making their annual pilgrimage to the Ivy Lawn Memorial Park cemetery.
Hundreds of large American flags lined the cemetery’s narrow lanes, adding to the somber atmosphere in the expansive memorial park.
Members of the Ventura County chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars posted the flags Friday, as they do each year for Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day, said Helen Garcia, whose father, a World War II veteran, is buried at the cemetery.
Garcia sat with three relatives near her mother’s grave, which they had just cleaned and adorned with fresh flowers. The Memorial Day cemetery trip is a yearly ritual, Garcia said.
George Graham of Oxnard also makes an annual Memorial Day trek to Ivy Lawn. As he planted flowers in front of his mother’s grave marker, he ran through the list of chores he sees to each Memorial Day.
“Well, I put flowers and clean my mother and father’s graves here, and then there’s my father-in-law across the way, and my son, he was killed in Vietnam,” Graham said. “His grave is in front of the mausoleum.”
The Oxnard Vietnam Veterans Memorial was the site of another commemoration this weekend, but the celebration had little to do with Memorial Day.
Thousands of people gathered near the memorial in downtown Oxnard for day two of the Cinco de Mayo fiesta, sponsored by the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Ventura County.
The festival--which was postponed for three weeks in the wake of the Los Angeles riots--went off without a hitch, organizers said, although some noted that the holiday weekend may have lowered attendance slightly.
Luis Huapaya, owner of Dante Immigration and Tax Services, was one of many people who worked throughout the two-day festival, his fourth in Oxnard, which commemorates the victory of Mexican troops over French forces in 1862. “I do this every year as a way to be involved with the community, meet people and help my business,” Huapaya said.
“This is really like a community picnic. I don’t feel like it’s just work--I’m enjoying myself,” Huapaya said as three men approached him to talk about their immigration status.
After answering each man’s questions in his soft-spoken Spanish, Huapaya handed them colorful flyers describing his services and asked them to call him next week.
“Some people feel too frigid to ask me questions about immigration usually, but this atmosphere is more festive than normal times, so they’re not as afraid,” he said.
In Moorpark, another group of Hispanic men took part in a festive Memorial Day celebration, this one commemorating a victory won by working within the system.
About 25 members of the Moorpark Day Laborers’ Assn. held a cookout in front of the Moorpark Civic Center complex, which last week was designated as the first officially sanctioned site in the county for day laborers to congregate and solicit work.
Controversy has surrounded the day laborers in recent months, as some shopkeepers sought to stop their daily gatherings near the Tipsy Fox, a Moorpark convenience store where 30 to 50 men solicited construction and gardening jobs.
The issue was resolved last week when the Moorpark City Council voted to allow the workers to gather in front of the civic center complex until a permanent site can be found.
Sunday’s cookout, sponsored by El Concilio del Condado de Ventura, an Oxnard-based Latino rights advocacy group, and the Day Laborers’ Assn., was a casual way for the predominantly male members of the organization to gather and savor their victory, said organizer Greg Simons.
While some of the day laborers barbecued steak and prepared condiments for the meal, others expressed hope that establishment of the site would end harassment the workers had suffered from local shopkeepers and representatives of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
“It’s nicer here in the park,” said 19-year-old Javier Meza of Moorpark, who was leaning against a tree with several other workers, “and there should be less problems with the police and the INS.”
HOLIDAY ACTIVITIES: B3
