Amid Football Rivalry, Unity With Fire Victims

I was looking for something, anything, to feel good about. After the fires, the riot trials, the riot verdicts and Michael Jackson, I needed good news. I needed reassurance that everything will be OK. I needed to wrap myself in normalcy.

On Friday night I found it. I hung out with 22,000 other people who put aside the bad news and fears about the next disaster for one night to yell and scream at the annual battle for the Eastside, the varsity football game between Garfield and Roosevelt high schools.

The score? It’s not as important as the verdict from East L.A.: We’ll survive.

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East L.A. has the reputation for being the part of town where the have-nots live, where too many gangs roam free, where there aren’t enough jobs and where the residents are so politically weak that three stabs to create a separate city have failed. It’s the place where, many outsiders whisper darkly, the residents speak some other language.

Of course, some of the criticisms ring true, but after a while the good people of East L.A. get defensive with each new piece of “evidence” that the Eastside is a cancer on L.A. They recoil the same way other Angelenos in “nicer” neighborhoods have been reacting to the recent barrage of L.A.-bashing in the national media. The media, Eastsiders charge, are now full of Mexican- and immigrant-bashing; they see it as a slam against them.

Against that backdrop, East Los Angeles takes special joy in traditions that emphasize its uniqueness. Of particular pride are the two high schools that serve it--Theodore Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights and James A. Garfield High School in unincorporated East L.A.

The schools have produced the heroes and the not-so-famous from an area not unlike any other in L.A. They’re places where the overwhelmingly Latino student bodies find out about themselves, their goals and the obstacles that face them. They also find out what it’s like to be from the Eastside. It’s a bond with a school, and with a community, that’s hard to break.

That’s why everyone in East L.A. College’s Weingart Stadium appreciated the moment at the start of Friday night’s game when two U.S. Olympic gold-medal boxers--Paul Gonzales, who graduated from Roosevelt, and Oscar De La Hoya, who graduated from Garfield--met at the center of the field for the coin toss. You may be a Garfield Bulldog or a Roosevelt Roughrider, but you’re also from East L.A. That carries special meaning in a city where stations in life are so easily marked by geography.

As the game wore on, the Roosevelt fans up in Section 6 talked about that community pride and the need to pick up the pieces after the disastrous fires.

“I felt sorry about those people burned out in Laguna Beach and Malibu,” said Oscar Almada, who was a wearing a red and gold “Rider Pride” button. “But the funny thing is, I’ve never been to those places. I don’t know those people. But I felt for them, like they were from East L.A.”

“Exactly,” broke in friend Jose Calderon, “we’re all in this together. I know they hurt. I was watching the TV and I felt scared when I saw the flames.”

Down the aisle, a grandmother, Donna Ortiz, agreed. “I gave $25 for the fire relief, and my husband understood why. We really can’t afford it. But you see, we’re all in this Los Angeles, this community of oneness. Tonight, I can to go to a football game and eventually, the (fire victims) will be able to, too. Someday, maybe they’ll do something for us over here.”

I wanted to chat with Ortiz’s husband, but he was on the Garfield side in Section 20.

“That man went to Garfield and he hates Roosevelt, so I make him sit over there,” she explained. “I hope we beat Garfield so I can make him cook dinner.”

I never found Armando Ortiz in Section 20, but others there were of the same opinion as the Roosevelt grandmother.

“I gave $10,” said Lucy Arenas, 24, who was wearing her husband’s Garfield jacket. “After everything else, we only have ourselves to answer to. If we don’t help, who will? We gotta help ourselves.”

Husband Ron nodded his head. “All we are, really, is one big family.”

*

The game came down to a last-ditch pass from Roosevelt quarterback Frank Madrid that fell incomplete in the Garfield end zone, sealing the Bulldogs’ 26-21 win.

With Garfield students screaming sarcastically, “ Que paso , Rosie, que paso? “ (“What happened? “), Roosevelt coach David Endow tried to console his players.

“You’ll hurt for a while, but you’ll keep going,” said Endow, who had dedicated the game to his parents, who passed away recently. “Take this as a learning experience. I’m proud of my parents, I’m proud of East L.A. and I’m proud of you.”

Without realizing it, Endow sent a message to a disaster-racked L.A. And you know, he’s right.