Strangers Pay Tribute at the Beach

The makeshift memorials are made up mostly of brightly colored flowers. Some include candles, balloons and hand-drawn signs expressing heartfelt sympathy and grief. The most elaborate memorial includes several stuffed animals and a 5-foot wooden cross adorned with seashell necklaces and rosary beads.

The handful of flowery shrines that have sprung up along the sun-drenched beaches onshore from the site of Monday’s Alaska Airlines crash near Port Hueneme drew friends and family of the victims throughout the day Wednesday.

But mostly, the memorials attracted a pilgrimage of strangers who paid tribute to the victims by leaving flowers, notes, feathers and stuffed toys on the sandy shore.

Silverio Montoya, a Fresno sales representative for a textbook company, paid tribute at a memorial on Silver Strand Beach to a co-worker, Juan Marquez from San Francisco, who died in the crash. Montoya stood quietly and lighted a candle at the group of bouquets. He remembered his friend as a hard worker.

“Words cannot describe the loss,” he said. The memorial, he said, provided some comfort.

“People caring, the affection, the love that complete strangers show,” he said. “It means that there is still a lot of goodness in human nature.”

Montoya had visited the most elaborate memorial, a collection of flowers, candles and cards within a few yards of the U.S. Naval Construction Battalion Center, which houses the command post for the search and recovery efforts.

A handwritten sign placed among the flowers of the memorial asked God to “grant rest to the souls of your servants in a place where there is no pain, no grief, no sighing, but everlasting life.”

Barbara Garcia-Weed of Ventura planted a white cross in the sand near the flowers, emblazoned with the flight number of the perished plane and the words: “America Weeps.”

She also left bits of bread, water and a feather. The bread and water, she said, were to provide nourishment to the crash victims as they travel to heaven.

“The feather is so they can fly on the wings of a golden eagle on their journey,” she said.

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Carla Gilbertson, a Huntington Beach resident, said she was so profoundly touched by the crash that she pulled her 10-year-old son, Landon, out of school to visit the makeshift memorial.

She said she wanted him to “get a better sense of what is really going on in the world.”

Landon, a stocky boy in a baseball cap, left three stuffed animals at the memorial, including a large, light brown teddy bear.

“We were very sad and we wanted to give the stuffed animals so the people will feel comforted,” Landon said.

It was a similar sentiment that drew about 50 teenagers from Hueneme Christian School to say a prayer and leave flowers at a small memorial near the base of the Port Hueneme fishing pier.

The students left class Wednesday afternoon and walked about five blocks from the school to the beach.

Debbie Steed, the school’s office manager, said her 12-year-old daughter, Rebekah, helped call the other students at the junior high school Tuesday night to urge them to each bring a flower to school for the memorial.

“They felt really close to the situation because it was so close to us,” Steed said.

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While mourners gathered at the handful of memorials up and down the beach, Coast Guard officials combed the nearby sands Wednesday for any debris from Flight 261 that may help authorities understand what brought down the jetliner, carrying 83 passengers and five crew members.

But Coast Guard officials said the tide had yet to bring any significant crash debris ashore. The bits of plastic, wood and other items that officials collected were much the same type of trash commonly found in the sand, making it difficult for authorities to separate vital clues from common beach debris.

At the breakwater near Port Hueneme Harbor, several Navy crew members from the Seabee base tried for several frustrating minutes to use a rope tied to a piece of wood to fish out a 2-foot-square plank that was bobbing in the ocean near the rocks.

A nearby resident had called authorities on a cell phone to report the plank as a possible aircraft part. But after pulling the object within feet of the shore, the naval crew decided it was nothing more than a common piece of plywood.

Coastal Ventura County residents said the crash jarred the collective consciousness of a community that usually looks to the water to spot a whale or enjoy a sunset among silhouetted islands.

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For many, the beaches are a haven where people live California’s good life, without the ugliness of big cities they fled. An occasional oil slick or El Nino besmirches this visage, but death on such a large scale only a few miles offshore was devastating for many beach lovers.

“This is a place we come to jog and enjoy the beach,” said Michelle Douglass, an Oxnard resident who works as a bartender at a nearby tavern. “Now there’s the darkness of death, and death so close to home.”

Narcizo Rodriguez and his wife, Sandra, grew up in Oxnard, but rarely visit the beach. They came to the altar on Silver Strand Beach for reasons they don’t fully understand.

“People seem to have one emotion when something like this happens,” he said.

“There is no wall or barriers between people. It’s beautiful. It’s too bad it takes a tragedy like this to bring us together.”