Ernie Has Passed, but the Magic in His Walk Survives : ‘His motivations were never underhanded or nasty. He just loved to garden and he loved people.’

I said farewell to a friend Sunday. As funerals go, this one was a kick in the pants. Just like Ernie.

Who but Ernie would elect to have his ashes scattered along the banks of that concrete sore called the Los Angeles River, at a place where the groaning and grumbling of the Ventura Freeway can be almost deafening?

But Ernie loved this unlikely place. Over the past seven years, he transformed a quarter-mile of the river in Sherman Oaks from a weed-choked mess into a lush retreat where humor and gentleness ruled.

Ernie’s Walk, as the place between Kester and Cedros avenues came to be known, was a simple monument to an old man whose imagination was overshadowed only by his kindness. Its creator and soul, Ernie LaMere, died June 24, a week after he slipped into a coma. He was 84.

But out there on his walk Ernie never seems far away, his spirit and laugh lingering like a gentle breeze.

Dozens upon dozens of Ernie’s friends and relatives gathered Sunday to say goodby at the walk, a once-bleak service road that runs hard along the river a few blocks from Ernie’s house.

A tree was planted in his honor and black crepe streamers hung from the chain-link fence that runs the length of Ernie’s Walk, but the mood was decidedly upbeat. Shorts and sandals were the dress code, and laughter punctuated remembrances of Ernie.

At the halfway point along the walk, newspaper clippings and a collage of photos were pasted up, chronicling the life of a man who knew no strangers. There was Ernie as a younger man in Madrid, in Hawaii, on his walk.

Farther along, on several pieces of whitewashed plywood, friends and fans jotted down memories of Ernie. Wrote one: “This earth is a better place because of you, Ernie. Thank you for providing us with what Shakespeare called ‘this other Eden.’ ” Wrote another: “Your spirit will live forever in this peaceful retreat.” And another: “Our loss is heaven’s gain.”

I agree.

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Ernie was one of only two people I have met in my travels as a journalist who won my unequivocal respect within minutes. And he never lost it. His motivations were never underhanded or nasty. He just loved to garden and he loved people.

Ernie’s Walk gave him a showcase for both. Visitors to the walk always knew they were Ernie’s guests, but he asked nothing of them except that they enjoy it. He offered bowls of fresh fruit, places to sit and stacks of magazines, the age of which made barbershop periodicals seem downright timely.

“I’m very well paid for what I do down here,” he told me shortly after I met him two years ago. Smiles were like hundred-dollar bills to Ernie, so by his accounting he was plenty rich.

I met Ernie in late spring, 1993, after quite literally stumbling into his garden during a lazy after-work bicycle ride. I had not noticed his walk from the street, but was trying to get onto the dirt access road that parallels the river so I could be free from the torrents of traffic. As I maneuvered down an embankment, however, I lost control of my bike and fell into the dirt. As cliched as it sounds, I stood up, dusted off and found myself in one of the most magical places in the city. *

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Canna lilies bloomed under the drooping branches of pepper trees. Here and there were geraniums and wisteria, raspberries and sweet peas. As I pushed my bike along the river, the walk revealed itself as a place of whimsy and beauty. Fake tombstones carried corny epitaphs and an inflatable Godzilla popped up among the greenery to keep visitors amused.

The magic derived not from the garden’s scale or its technical perfection. It was small and sometimes a little ragged at the edges. Magic poured instead from Ernie’s imagination and dedication.

I found him that day, as so many others found him on other days, covered with dirt, with a smile on his face. He showed me around the walk and then invited me over to see his house, a tract home he converted into a place he called Shangri-La, complete with fountains and topiary animals and all sorts of nifty contraptions.

I was so enchanted by Ernie and his walk that I wrote a story about him for this newspaper and traced the development of his promenade. The walk began as a place to plant leftover trimmings from his own yard, but soon Ernie was hooked and it became an obsession.

Most days he spent at the river’s edge with his dog, Tippy, pulling weeds and lugging new plantings around in a wagon. His dream as a child was to become a contractor or an engineer, but the Depression intervened and Ernie took work as a restaurant busboy.

Over time, he moved up the ranks and worked as a maitre d’ at resorts across the country. He retired more than two decades ago, when he set to work on Shangri-La and on Ernie’s Walk.

Ernie invited me over to his house a few times after the first story about him. He ran to pick fruit from his trees and to show off decorations before his annual Halloween show, in which he delighted neighborhood kids with coffins and ghosts and goblins.

It was not long after that he started to get sick. Age was advancing. When his story appeared in Reader’s Digest, Ernie was in the hospital, and the nurses, he said, started treating him like a celebrity.

He did not discourage them.

Even then, Ernie knew that his time here was nearing an end. His wish was to have his ashes scattered along his walk. “That way,” he told me, “I’ll always be with the walk and no one will ever be alone.”

So last Sunday, when his friends gathered on the walk, Ernie was there among his works, all around us.

Somewhere, he was no doubt surveying another garden for the perfect place to put an inflatable Godzilla.