The Day After, Parents Face a New Anxiety

The parents, their young firmly in hand, gathered not long after dawn outside the Alexandria Avenue School, waiting for the buses to pick up the children.

It is a daily ritual, time-honored in this new-immigrant enclave west of downtown, where overcrowded and aging schools like Alexandria cannot accommodate the burgeoning youthful population.

But on Thursday, a day after a school bus accident killed two neighborhood children en route to classes, a feeling of unease as thick as the early morning fog hovered over the familiar scene.

“It makes you think: This could be the last time we see them,” said Armando Granados, who gently kissed his daughter, Patricia, as she boarded the bus. “We hope she’ll come back. We expect her to come back. But one never knows.”

This is a community of people with long histories of hardship, with ample reason to distrust the fates.

The district surrounding the Alexandria school, sandwiched between Hollywood and Koreatown, is the bustling home to tens of thousands of Central Americans who fled warfare and poverty to reach these sometimes unforgiving streets. Here, crime, drugs and the continual struggle to survive as factory hands, day laborers and maids add up to a different kind of civil war.

“We tried so hard to protect our children, to take them away from the war, and then something like this happens,” said Maria Chavez, an El Salvador native whose 8-year-old son, Juan, was aboard the ill-fated bus Wednesday morning.

By chance, Juan took a seat on the right side of the bus, which was spared damage when the malfunctioning rod of a city garbage truck ripped through the driver’s side of the bus near Temple and Alvarado streets.

Less fortunate were his two close friends and classmates, Francisco Javier Mata and Brian Serrano, who were killed instantly. The accident was close enough to home that Francisco’s father heard the police helicopters but thought nothing of the commotion. Another close friend, Mario Garay, a cousin of Serrano’s, was seriously injured but is expected to survive. All attended Glen Alta Elementary School on the Eastside, where they were bused from their crowded barrio.

A day later, many parents recounted their children’s trauma. One mother spoke of her boy’s odd behavior: He continually reenacted the accident with a toy garbage truck and school bus.

On Thursday, Juan Chavez spoke easily enough, almost excitedly, of seeing his fallen friends, their blood flowing freely. But Wednesday night, troubled by his thoughts, he insisted on sleeping in his mother’s bed.

His mother kept Juan home from school Thursday, as did many parents of survivors. Indeed, school officials said Thursday that only 11 youths boarded the school bus for Glen Alta, down from Wednesday’s 48.

At his parents’ cramped studio apartment, Juan showed a crayon drawing to a visitor. He had drawn a long yellow bus, its windows smashed, streaked with dashes of red.

“That’s the blood of the ninos [children],” Juan explained matter-of-factly. He then directed attention to a crude stick figure lying alongside the bus. “That’s Francisco,” he noted, referring to his dead friend.

Hoping such searing memories would not wreak permanent damage, Chavez and other grief-stricken parents did what they could to soften the blow.

At least two mothers made the bus trip with their children Thursday, hoping to reassure them that this most commonplace of childhood experiences was not suddenly fraught with peril.

“I think my little boy is happier in school, so he plays with his friends and doesn’t keep thinking about the accident over and over,” said Narcisa Ramirez, whose 6-year-old son, Rudy, survived the crash. “He has to get on with his life and his education,” added Ramirez, a native of Guatemala who spoke outside the Glen Alta campus in Lincoln Heights.

Inside Glen Alta, a school district crisis team of counselors and psychologists assisted children in venting their conflicted feelings through discussion, drawing and writing.

“Children have different ways of expressing their grief,” said Miguel Campa, an assistant principal at the Figueroa Street school who was helping out at Glen Alta.

Among the many matters preoccupying James A. Allen, Glen Alta’s besieged principal, was an elevated absentee rate at the 475-student school. He attributed the absences to residual fear from the accident. School authorities intend to contact parents whose children are hesitant to return.

“I have told everyone that school is the safest place for their children,” said an emotionally drained Allen, whose difficult tasks included making official identifications of the dead boys at the accident site. “No one, absolutely no one could have foreseen what took place on the corner of Alvarado and Temple.”

Despite the aura of tragedy, there was also a sense of renewal. A tree is to be planted at the school today during a memorial service; there are plans for a mural commemorating the two fallen students. A steady stream of well-wishers laid flowers on the lawn.

“We’re doing our best to make something good of this disastrous situation,” said Allen, principal at Glen Alta for six years. “We’re surviving.”