The Few, Proud, Nostalgic

They call themselves the November 10th Assn., and calendar the date as though it were a family birthday.

That’s the day the Marine Corps was created in 1775 by the Second Continental Congress. These 100-plus Orange County men and two women, all former Marines, gather each year to swap stories and reminisce.

“We’re legends in our own mind, but we have fun,” said U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, who displays a large red-and-gold Marine flag in his federal court chambers in Santa Ana. “Mainly, we just want to keep alive the tradition; we are proud we served with the greatest group of warriors in the world.”

For their anniversary dinner in Newport Coast, scheduled for Wednesday, some will arrive in their old dress-blue uniforms, just as they always do at these gatherings. One table will be empty, with just a saber and a candle, to honor fallen comrades, just as it always is.

But one thing will not be as usual. The master of ceremonies has always been Newport Beach attorney Frank Quinlan, who helped found the group in the mid-1980s. Quinlan will miss this year’s party.

True to form, he is a brigadier general in the Marine Reserves and was called to active duty a few weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Reached at U.S. Military Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla., Quinlan said the annual November 10th Assn. dinner always reminds him how glad he is to have chosen the Marines. He has never missed one before.

“Right now, we’re working 16-hour days, seven days a week,” he said of his Reserves assignment, though he declined to give details. “But I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else at this time.”

Quinlan was a student at the University of Wisconsin in the turbulent Vietnam War era when the left-wing Students for a Democratic Society vowed it would not allow Marine recruiters on campus. The recruiters overcame that by challenging the SDS to a debate. Quinlan was so impressed he signed up the next day.

“The Marine Corps is a religion,” said Villa Park attorney Bill Dougherty, who was a Marine fighter pilot in the Korean War. “This is our one chance to share that with each other.”

Wednesday’s event will be one of the few times that the group hasn’t met at the El Toro Marine base, which is now closed. The usual room was unavailable during the base transition, but the group hopes to return there in future years.

From the beginning, the members have placed a Marine helmet on the table and invited each other to toss in cash for a cause. The money almost always goes to a Marine-related organization, such as the old El Toro Marine museum, or a Marine foundation.

There’s always a toast to fallen comrades, read each year by Carter, who was seriously wounded in the Vietnam War.

There’s also the reading of the commandants’ messages--one from the current commandant, and the one from Major Gen. Commandant John A. LeJeune from 1921, which is when the Marines decided to begin an annual birthday celebration. (“Generation after generation of Marines have grown gray in war in both hemispheres and in every corner of the seven seas, that our country might enjoy peace and security.”)

At one dinner, Carter performed a wedding ceremony for two Marines.

Vanda Bresnan, a 20-year veteran and retired lieutenant colonel, said you almost have to be a fellow Marine to understand how important the night is. “You feel almost silly talking about it, but all the pomp and ceremony just makes you feel warm and fuzzy,” she said.

Bresnan said she joined the Marines after discovering that her employer was paying her 15% less than male hires. In the Marines, she said, personnel make the same salary, regardless of gender.

Bresnan spent much of her later career at both the former El Toro and Tustin bases. When she retired, she and her husband loved the area too much to leave.

That’s another reason the dinner is so important to these veterans: They want to keep alive the county’s historical connections to the Marine Corps.

But the Sept. 11 attacks make this year different, partly because of Quinlan’s absence.

But mostly, Carter said, it’s because of all the future members of the club now serving in the war in Afghanistan.

It’s the next generation of Marines fighting for their country, Carter said, and “We won’t be forgetting them.”