Relief Effort for Bosnians Stalls on San Pedro Wharf

It seemed like the perfect symbol of both the compassion and frustration many Americans feel about Bosnian war victims: four tons of donated food, clothing and medical supplies sitting forlornly on a wharf in San Pedro, about 6,400 miles from their intended destination and no way to get there.

The relief supplies, which include crutches, canned food, aspirin and 8,000 cloth diapers, were brought to Berth 53 at Los Angeles Harbor over the weekend by hundreds of private donors. They had heard radio reports about a relief drive organized by Stewart Resmer, a 43-year-old Santa Monica tow truck driver and a Vietnam War veteran.

Resmer had planned to load the supplies onto the Lane Victory, a renovated World War II cargo ship that a group of former merchant seamen, most of them in their late 60s and 70s, intend to sail to Europe for ceremonies marking the 50th anniversary of the D-Day invasion on the Normandy coast of France.

The only problem was, as carload after carload of relief supplies arrived at the wharf, the ship was not there. It was in the Long Beach Naval Shipyard, taking on a load of stabilizing ballast for the upcoming voyage. And when the Lane Victory got back Monday to Berth 53, where the relief supplies were piled up under large blue tarps, the retired merchant seamen who are running the ship said the whole idea was news to them.

“Bosnia?” said Clint Johnson, coordinator for the Lane Victory’s 18,000-mile, four-month European voyage, which is expected to begin Thursday. “We’re not going anywhere near Bosnia. We’re going to France.”

Resmer, meanwhile, says he knows perfectly well where Bosnia is. But he still wants the 455-foot Lane Victory to take the relief supplies to France for delivery to relief agencies that might take them to Bosnia.

“They’ve got all this empty cargo space, so why not take some relief supplies?” said Resmer, an ex-Marine who has done some volunteer work aboard the Lane Victory during the past few years. “It’s the height of hypocrisy if they don’t do this. I mean, these are guys who helped stop the Nazis in World War II. We’re facing the same sort of thing right now in Bosnia.”

That sort of talk irritates the Lane Victory crew members, all of them members of the U.S. Merchant Marine Veterans of World War II. The San Pedro-based national organization that rescued the 1945-vintage ship from mothballs in 1989 has spent countless hours and more than $1 million fixing it up. It’s especially irritating, crew members say, when it comes from a relative youngster who was not even born when the merchant seamen were hauling cargoes through dangerous waters in World War II.

“He (Resmer) started this whole thing on his own,” said Jerry Turner, 67, who runs the ship’s store on the Lane Victory. “He didn’t even ask anybody on the ship about it.”

Resmer, meanwhile, said that if the Lane Victory does not take the supplies, would load them into a metal shipping container and try to find another ship to take them to Bosnia.

Late Tuesday, Lane Victory crew members said the relief supplies were being loaded onto a truck, their immediate destination unknown.

“It (the relief drive) probably should have been a little better organized,” said Holly Collins, 40, a Santa Monica artist who collected more than two dozen boxes of supplies and brought them to the wharf. “But it came from the heart.”