Trying to Salute the Dead and Inspire the Living : Monuments: Vietnam veteran Ken Marks hopes a memorial in Hermosa Beach will be a symbol of appreciation and a vehicle for social action.

U.S. Marine veteran Ken Marks of Hermosa Beach saw battle for nearly three years in a reconnaissance patrol on the border between North and South Vietnam. There, he survived a handful of bullet and bayonet wounds and witnessed the deaths of youthful comrades.

Beyond that brief account, however, Marks will say nothing more about his combat experience.

“There’s better things that Vietnam veterans can do than sit around and talk about war stories,” said Marks, who helps counsel drug-addicted and homeless vets in Venice. “They can heal themselves and their community.”

To begin that healing, Marks wants a memorial erected in Hermosa Beach for military veterans. His idea has taken hold. Marks is spearheading a citizens committee that is hoping to get a monument built in the small oceanside community by next Veteran’s Day.

“I see a memorial that will tell me that my community and my country do appreciate and understand that my brothers have fallen for a purpose,” said Marks, who has lived in Hermosa for 21 years. “And that invigorates me to get back out there to help society.”

The inspiration for the memorial came last year when Marks traveled to other cities to commemorate Veteran’s Day. Marks remembers asking himself: “Why am I going to Redondo Beach or Los Angeles when Hermosa Beach is my home?”

The committee, composed of about a dozen local veterans, city officials and a high school student, plans to propose a design and location for the memorial within six weeks. Committee members point out that the memorial, which would be privately funded, is intended to honor all of America’s war veterans--the dead and especially the living.

“We are trying to take away the facelessness and namelessness of veterans and bring it home to people and say, ‘Hey, veterans are people from this community too,’ ” said Vietnam veteran Steve Crecy, a committee member and city parks and recreation commissioner.

While tight-lipped about design specifics, Marks and Crecy said they want a monument that will evoke the same poignant feelings as the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington. Marks somberly recalled his visit to the black granite slab cut into the earth in the nation’s capital.

“When the rain hit the wall, it looked like tears or blood running down it. For me, it was a very cleansing experience,” Marks said.

The national monument will certainly influence, but won’t dictate, their final design proposal, committee members say.

“We want something that will emotionally affect people,” Crecy said. “We want something that is going to be beautiful. And we want something that is going to be simple.”

The committee hopes the monument will be especially meaningful for Vietnam veterans who were taunted by anti-war demonstrators as they returned from battle. Unlike other returning soldiers treated to victory parades, Marks and Crecy bitterly remember being verbally abused, even spat on.

“The one thing I will never forget is the day I came home,” recalled Crecy, a draftee who served in Vietnam in 1968. “The first thing I wanted to do was to just take off my uniform. It was really weird, but that’s the way it was.”

Marks said he hopes the overdue recognition the memorial bestows upon veterans will motivate many of them to attack problems in their community. Vietnam veterans have been absent too long from contributing to the betterment of society, he added.

“The Vietnam veterans took some time off, but now we are back,” Marks said. “We are going to get out there in the community.”

Marks is especially gratified that a high school student is on the committee.

“We want to bring to his mind that he is walking the streets because we bled all over some country for him,” Marks said. “And that we are not wackos. We are everyday people who want a little more for our country than the average person because we feel like we have put ourselves out.”

Ryan Tucker, a senior at Redondo Union High School, wanted to be on the committee to recognize the efforts of Marks and other veterans.

“I respect the veterans,” Tucker said. “And I look up to him (Marks) because I’ve heard what he went through over there. This is about letting people know what happened.”