Thousands Pay Tribute to Fallen Service Members

As her 3-year-old daughter waved a small American flag, Debra Martinez silently wiped away tears brought on by the memory of her father, a military recruiter and Vietnam veteran who died seven weeks ago after nearly a lifetime serving his country.

“He’s being thanked for it,” Martinez said Monday, gazing at the large crowd gathered at Ivy Lawn Memorial Park near Ventura for a solemn service to honor America’s war dead.

“He used to come here every year to participate,” the 28-year-old said of her father, Gerald Slamkowski. “The military was his life. He would be so excited, so ecstatic that I’m here.”

In ceremonies from Ventura to Camarillo to Thousand Oaks, veterans, thankful citizens and relatives of loved ones who dedicated their lives to the armed services came together to mark Memorial Day against a backdrop of brilliant blue skies and crisply snapping flags.

About 3,500 people gathered for a memorial service at Pierce Bros. Valley Oaks Memorial Park in Westlake Village, an hourlong ceremony that included a historical tribute to American military campaigns from Bunker Hill to the Persian Gulf War.

“We haven’t missed one since they started,” Thousand Oaks resident Joel Meyer said of the 4-year-old event. “I spent 26 years in the service. It is important to me personally.”

Meyer, 85, spent three years in England with the Army Air Corps during World War II.

“We had a fighter group, and we lost people, and I remember that,” said Meyer, who retired from the military in 1967. “I think [people] have to realize that a lot of people volunteered to save what we have--we have freedom, which isn’t true all over the world. Lots of people realize that, as evident today all over Ventura County.”

Indeed, at Ivy Lawn, 857 flags swished in the breeze as veterans from every armed conflict since World War II lined up in dress uniforms. Others saluted sharply in their green camouflage fatigues and helped lay wreaths at a grave to commemorate soldiers killed in battle.

“Today, we pay tribute to those who paid the ultimate price,” said master of ceremonies Garland Middleton, addressing an audience of several hundred in front of the cemetery’s mausoleum.

The 28th annual event concluded with a 21-gun salute and a thundering fly-by of a Navy F-14 Tomcat just a few hundred feet above.

Homero Carrillo, a 24-year-old Navy mechanic based at Point Mugu who had worked on the fighter jet a day earlier, said his thoughts Monday were with his fellow service members stationed overseas because of the conflict in Yugoslavia.

“It is remembrance of the people who served before me and are serving now,” Carrillo said. “A lot of my friends are in Yugoslavia right now.”

Chris Lowe, 19, turned out in his spotless dress Marine uniform. The former Ventura resident has been in the armed services for a year and a half.

“It feels good to see people remembering what the military has done for them, earning our freedom,” Lowe said, flashing a fearless exuberance no longer visible in the tearful faces of many war-scarred veterans around him.

Asked who he remembers this Memorial Day, retired Navy Lt. Cmdr. William Knapp began to weep.

“There are so many of them,” Knapp said, almost in a whisper, as he recalled the nine major battles he fought in the Pacific Ocean during World War II.

For 75-year-old Harry “Gabe” Gabrielson, Monday wasn’t only about remembering comrades killed in battle during two wars.

Clutching a bouquet of cut flowers, Gabrielson leaned over the grave of his wife, Helen, who was killed in a car accident near their Ventura home just before Christmas 1992.

“Here I’ve been in World War II and the Korean War, and my wife was killed right around the corner from our house,” he said. “You only have but one life, and as you get older, you rethink that.”