Old Soldiers Living in a Kind of Exile

Julian Schwartz likes Las Vegas and Las Vegas surely likes him. But at least Schwartz’s vice could produce a kind of fringe benefit for Southern California’s war veterans, if only because Barstow happens to be on the way.

Schwartz, a 70-year-old Woodland Hills resident, knows something about Barstow that most of us don’t. The desert town is the home of a handsome new retirement home for veterans.

The last time Schwartz headed for Vegas, he dropped in on his friend Nella, a retired WAC sergeant and World War II veteran. Nella, who is struggling with emphysema, moved into the Barstow home a few months ago. The new home was OK, Nella told him, but “kind of lonely.” Visitors are rare.

Later, as Schwartz was leaving, he noticed “this old guy sitting on a bench, just staring into space.”

Schwartz said hello and soon learned this man was from Los Angeles. And how did he like his new home?

“It’s lonely,” the man said.

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Of course it is. Barstow may not be in the middle of nowhere, but it’s close. Family and friends can’t just drop by. Social life at the old soldiers home might improve if more old soldiers moved in. But one-third of the compound’s 400 beds remain empty, because Barstow is Barstow. The home has had difficulty finding doctors, nurses and others to serve residents.

You’d think the desert isolation would have been a very strong argument against Barstow as the site for what is now the only old soldiers home in Southern California. That’s what Julian Schwartz thought. A member of the Los Angeles County Veterans Advisory Committee, Schwartz could envision no site better than the expansive grounds of the VA Medical Center in West Los Angeles.

For years veterans groups had complained about the fact that California’s only existing old soldiers home, originally built for Civil War veterans 113 years ago, was in the Napa Valley town of Yountville. And for years now Schwartz has shaken his head in dismay trying to understand a process that was good for Barstow if not necessarily the nearly 700,000 California veterans who have reached retirement age.

“There’s so much politics involved,” he said. “Who’s getting lost in the whole process but the veterans?”

A commission appointed by Gov. Pete Wilson made the decision. To Schwartz their task should have been simple: “Where will you be doing the most service for the people you are trying to help?” Why Barstow when there is land dedicated expressly to serving veterans in the heart of metropolitan Los Angeles? Why Barstow when there are military bases closing in Los Angeles and Orange counties?

It’s not that those options weren’t considered. They were, yet in 1992 the commission “strongly” recommended Barstow for the first Southern California home. Why? Because the city of Barstow donated the land and the people of Barstow, bless them, campaigned hard for the $32-million project that would spruce up the local economy. Boosters raised $100,000 to provide televisions and other amenities for their new neighbors.

The report leaves the impression that the commission thought red tape was something you use to tie your hands. Building a home quickly was a priority, and the commission’s report emphasizes that acquiring federal land could be a lengthy, expensive, uncertain process.

Yet only a few paragraphs later, there is a passage extolling the many virtues of the West L.A. site, including the support of veterans groups throughout the state. It was noted that the state of New York had already broken ground for a new home on VA hospital grounds in Queens.

So New York was able to cut through the red tape. Yet the California commission weighed the options and decided Barstow was best. Why, West L.A. didn’t even make the top four choices.

Construction recently began for a second home in Chula Vista. Lancaster and the Ventura County community of Saticoy have also been chosen but are as yet unfunded. (Then-state Sen. Don Rogers, whose district included Lancaster, served on the commission.)

To Schwartz, the only site that makes sense is Chula Vista because of the many veterans who live in greater San Diego.

“There’s no way you can justify the outlying areas,” Schwartz argued. The locations may be convenient for some veterans. But for most, Schwartz said, it would amount to a kind of “exile.”

Others express similar opinions. The Sacramento Bee recently quoted Bob Haley, former Sacramento lobbyist for the American Legion, offering this assessment of the Barstow home:

“Put a chain-link fence around it and you’d have a prison. If they put another home in Lancaster, it will have all Barstow’s problems.”

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Schwartz says Barstow resembles an attractive school campus more than a penitentiary, but the comparison may be appropriate for other reasons. Struggling desert communities often welcome prisons for the jobs they bring. Nobody else wants prisons in their backyard. Did the Westside, with its snooty ways, work to keep this low-income housing project out of its backyard?

A nonprofit organization called Veterans Park, an alliance of Westside residents and merchants, has lobbied to keep certain proposed developments out of the VA property, such as a medical research facility now under consideration. But Executive Director Susan C. Young points out that the group had ardently supported the creation of a state veterans home in West L.A.. This project, she says, fits with the surrounding community’s idea of what is appropriate on the land, while other proposals don’t.

It has been suggested that VA officials had discouraged state officials by expressing only tepid interest. But in July 1996, medical center Executive Director Kenneth J. Clark wrote to the governor’s commission requesting that the West L.A. site be reconsidered for a home. Only 10 days ago, a 156-bed residential drug rehab program for homeless veterans opened in a formerly vacant building--a project that involved cooperation of four cities, the county and the federal government.

It’s too late to reconsider Barstow, but lawmakers could still substitute West L.A. for Lancaster or Saticoy.

Julian Schwartz, a former membership director for the B’nai B’rith, says the best location was so obvious from the start that he can’t help but mutter his suspicions. If the VA and the Westsiders both wanted a veterans home, why didn’t it happen? Certainly Brentwood has more clout in Sacramento than Barstow. Certainly some people must be speaking with forked tongues.

That’s another reason Schwartz gets riled when he makes a detour on his trips to Vegas. He feels a special kinship, even “survivor’s guilt,” for those who served during World War II. The war ended not long after he enlisted in the Navy.

So when he visits Barstow, Schwartz just figures these men and women deserve better than to fade away in loneliness.

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Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times’ Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, CA 91311, or via e-mail at scott.harris@latimes.com Please include a phone number.