Old Soldier Undertakes Monumental Assignment

While his wife enjoys her free time sewing, gardening or taking long walks, Ross “Buzz” Buzzell spends much of his retirement steam-cleaning a veterans’ memorial at the Ventura County Government Center or replacing American flags stolen from the site.

It’s hard work, and often the 77-year-old retired restaurant worker wishes the government center would do a better a job of maintaining the 12-foot-long concrete memorial.

But the payoff is worth the effort, he says, and because no one else has volunteered, Buzzell pampers the site and its surrounding foliage like it’s his fourth child.

“I live close to it and feel like it belongs to me,” he said of the $65,000 monument dedicated to all who have served in America’s wars. “This is a labor of love. I spent so much time getting it built and dedicated, I don’t want to see it deteriorate.”

Buzzell, who said he has been called “Buzz” since the Army, helped design the triangle-shaped structure that was built in 1985 with money and services donated largely by local residents and businesses. He suggested the site at the corner of Victoria Avenue and Telegraph Road--a decision he sometimes questions. In his enthusiasm to place the memorial in a very visible place, he didn’t consider the roar created by the constant stream of cars and trucks on both roads.

Since it was built, the government center’s maintenance crew hasn’t paid close attention to it, and no veterans organization has stepped forward. So Buzzell has taken over the task--replacing worn swivels attached to the flag, worrying about the shrubbery and lowering the flag to half-staff three times a year.

The gentle old man says of his life that he “didn’t do much remarkable” but he did fight in World War II, and he is devoted to remembering those who gave their lives to keep this nation free.

“I don’t mean to take away from other wars, but WWII affected more of the world than any other,” he said. “There are a number of generations who’ve forgotten all about it. This reminds people of what veterans have done and what they go through now.”

Each year, Buzzell holds ceremonies at the monument on Memorial Day, Veterans Day and to commemorate the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. This year he plans to make three large posters containing headlines and news stories that ran in the San Francisco Examiner in December 1941. “The kids should enjoy that,” he said.

This year, he said he will have to reschedule the Dec. 7 Pearl Harbor day celebration from 11 a.m. to noon because he will have dialysis for three hours that morning.

“I’m worried about who will take care of it when I die,” said Buzzell, who on this day wore a bright yellow jacket with the inscription “National Order of Trench Rats,” in reference to U.S. soldiers in World War I. “I’m getting pretty old, you know.”

Buzzell was wounded June 8, 1944, on the island of Biak in northern New Guinea. Eleven pieces of shrapnel from a mortar shell left him with only one kidney. Buzzell’s recovery meant spending much of the next three years in the hospital--and undergoing 19 operations. “They put me together pretty well,” he said.

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But his remaining kidney is now failing, and he needs to visit the hospital three times a week.

Buzzell said he doesn’t know what engendered his passion for the often overlooked memorial.

His wife, 68-year-old Muriel, said such devotion baffles her as well.

“That memorial has meant a lot to him ever since it was built, more than that I can’t tell you,” she said. “He’s such a veteran. He loved being a part of the war [effort]. He would have stayed in the service longer, maybe his whole life, if he hadn’t been wounded.”

Muriel Buzzell said her husband has a large collection of old war movies on videotape that he watches again and again. But the man is taciturn when it comes to recalling other details of his past.

He would say only that he was born in San Francisco and “worked in the restaurant business and traveled. . . . I’ve worked at many things . . . nothing to brag about.”

Then he tells a short story from his childhood.

“When I was boy in the orphanage below a Marine hospital, the veterans would sit outside and fold those little cellophane wrappers,” he said, running his fingers together like he was rolling a cigarette.

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He said the veterans would use the cellophane from cigarette packs to make a band that could be put around a hat, or used on a belt. The bands weren’t worth anything, he said, but people would buy them to support the former soldiers and sailors.

“That’s what those poor guys had to do to earn a living. I always think of those WWI veterans and I hate to think of WWII veterans ending up like that,” he said.

Buzzell wants to do whatever he can to help veterans. And keeping the memorial well-manicured and attractive is his gift to those who defended the freedom many Americans take for granted.

So every couple of days, he stops by and walks slowly over to the flag. He sits on the benches and runs his hand along the concrete memorial to determine how dirty it is.

One time he even wrote a letter to the editor of a local newspaper offering to purchase a flag for some kids who apparently really wanted one, because they kept stealing the flag from the memorial.

In his small, but devoted way, Buzzell said he is honoring the veterans he admires.

“I’m a small cog in a big wheel, but maybe it reminds people.”

* HOLIDAY EVENTS

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