Fight for Freedom

Old warriors gathered with family, friends and schoolchildren throughout Ventura County on Wednesday under steel gray skies to remember.

On the 80th anniversary of the armistice that brought World War I to an end, the raw wind riffled through submerged memories of aging veterans bowed, but unbroken, by the years.

And with schools closed countywide, youngsters in attendance clad in the uniforms of Sea Cadets or the Reserve Officer Training Corps struggled to imagine the unimaginable.

“Freedom is not free and there is a price to be paid for living in a free society,” retired Navy Reserve Capt. Frank Budroe told about 300 people at a Veterans Day ceremony at Ivy Lawn Cemetery in Ventura. “Our departed veterans and comrades should be considered in life good, good friends. In their passing, they should be considered as saints.”

It was a sentiment shared by many at the poignant ceremony framed by 800 American flags lining the roads of the 62-acre cemetery.

Jeanne Reiver of Ventura sat quietly crocheting as she waited for the observance to begin. Tears began to trickle down the cheeks of the 84-year-old woman as she recalled her service in India and Palm Springs with the Air Transport Command during World War II.

And she bemoaned the homeless veterans customarily absent from such ceremonies, often forgotten even by those who served with them.

“They’re sending people into space, but they’re not taking care of the people down here,” said the member of the Jewish War Veterans Post 101. “I think it’s a disgrace to our country.”

Two antique war planes droned overhead as the rich voice of a sole male vocalist sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” to open the ceremony. The strains of “Amazing Grace” played by a lone piper reverberated through the gravestones as the observance drew to a close.

And just before the crowd dispersed to place flags and flowers on nearby graves, dozens of white doves symbolizing peace were released into the leaden sky.

Former Marine Ronald Garcia, 53, of Santa Paula and his 3-year-old grandson, Landin Garcia-Osborne, a Marine Corps hat perched on his head and an American flag tightly gripped in a small hand, were among those who fanned out to visit the tombs of relatives.

“We hope we never go through another war, but we wanted him to be aware,” said Garcia, nodding at his grandson, who has never missed a Veterans Day ceremony. “We come for the World War II vets because they’re leaving us in numbers and we don’t want to forget.”

Indeed, as the century draws to a close, the aging veterans of World War II are following their predecessors into history books.

No local veterans of World War I--the conflict once optimistically dubbed “the war to end all wars”--now take part in the day originally set aside in 1919 to honor them, said Joseph Sawyer, a retired Air Force officer.

The last surviving veteran of The Great War who was a member of the Ventura County chapter of the Military Order of the World Wars, which organizes the ceremony, died about three years ago, Sawyer said.

And with the local organization’s members now averaging 78 years old, those who served in subsequent conflicts are quietly vanishing as well.

“I’m an old man,” said Sawyer, 81. “We just can’t get youngsters to join.”

Still, children remember, said Jim Martinez of Santa Paula, who stood silently at the rear of the crowd at Ivy Lawn, wearing khaki pants and a silver Vietnam veterans jacket.

The 50-year-old ex-Marine has struggled to come to terms with the wrenching conflict over the years. It is the hard-earned respect of his children that has helped soothe the psychological wounds of being a veteran of Vietnam.

“It took awhile for me to get used to that’s what I was--that’s what I’m going to die as,” said the survivor of the infamous Tet Offensive in 1968. “I have two sons that are very proud of their dad. That’s something you don’t see any more. They even brag about me to their friends and that makes me very proud.”