A Day of Tears and Thanks in Southland

They came from Camarillo and Canoga Park, Santa Maria and San Diego. They came in station wagons, Jeeps and vans specially equipped to haul the wheelchairs of aging veterans. They came bearing flags and homegrown roses, to tidy the graves of loved ones and to remember fallen comrades.

Under a blue sky festooned with puffy clouds, hundreds of Southern Californians flocked Monday to the Los Angeles National Cemetery in Westwood to participate in the site’s 116th Memorial Day ceremony. As rousing military marches played by the 300th Army Band floated on the breeze, families and individuals strolled through the expansive rows of gravestones, offering thanks for those who, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, “gave the last full measure of devotion.”

The event was one of many held throughout the Southland to honor the servicemen and women who died in the nation’s past and current conflicts.

Chris and Garth Morrison, a sister and brother from Santa Maria, came as they do most years to visit their father’s gravestone.

This year they had another reason. Their mother, Billie Louise, died in December, and she now shares the tree-shaded gravesite of her husband, Garth. The World War II soldier, who survived three years of service in the Pacific Theater and returned home to father 12 children, died in 1991.

“It’s like they saved that spot for my dad,” Chris Morrison said, dabbing tears. “It’s where he would have wanted to be buried, on a hill under a tree.”

Nearby, Sarah Mitchell of Sherman Oaks sat and wept quietly before the headstone of Allan Kendall Walker, who at the time of his death last year became the cemetery’s first veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The staff sergeant, a U.S. Marine stationed at Camp Pendleton, was killed in Iraq in April 2004, three days shy of his 29th birthday, when his Humvee convoy was attacked.

The National Cemetery is closed to additions except for eligible family members, although a few who served in Iraq have been allowed in. Allan Walker’s grandfather, Hugh K. Walker, a World War II veteran who served in the Navy, also is interred there.

“I was told to look him up,” Mitchell said of the younger Walker. She has three cousins serving in Iraq. Wearing a white T-shirt with a U.S. flag on the front, she described herself as “very critical” of the war. Mitchell said she was feeling a “mixed bag” of emotions on this Memorial Day.

From Placentia, Don Shepherd and his son, Jacob, brought 40 U.S. flags to plant on the graves of 40 strangers among the nearly 85,000 buried at the cemetery. Jacob, 4, picked at random the sites where he wanted to add a second flag to those that had already been placed.

“I tell him it’s the people who fought and died for us,” Shepherd said. “They’re the reason we can get up and go to work in the morning and live in a nice house.”

Jacob had no idea that he was participating in a long-held custom. The tradition officially began three years after the Civil War ended, on May 30, 1868, as Decoration Day, a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the war dead with flowers. After World War I, the day was expanded to honor those who had died in all of America’s wars.

As the Monday tributes came to a close, children and adults alike cheered a flyover by the Van Nuys-based Condor Squadron of nine vintage AT-6 planes, the most famous World War II trainers. After the ceremony, families with digital cameras clustered around a small band of men and boys wearing the hot, earth-toned wool uniforms of the Confederacy.

Elsewhere throughout the Southland, observances large and small featured patriotic music and speeches, as well as military displays.

In the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles Mayor-elect Antonio Villaraigosa participated in the 17th annual Valley of the Stars Canoga Park/West Hills Memorial Day Parade.

On the beach in Santa Monica, visitors viewed more than 1,600 crosses set up by Veterans for Peace, an antiwar group, to dramatize the number of Americans killed in Iraq. One cross was for Santa Monica Police Officer Ricardo A. Crocker, 39, a Marine reservist who was slain Thursday during a second tour of duty.

The display, which featured nearly twice as many crosses as last Memorial Day, has been set up each Sunday since February.

Forest Lawn staged Memorial Day ceremonies at all four of its Los Angeles-area memorial parks. At the Hollywood Hills cemetery, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca delivered the keynote speech. At the Glendale cemetery, a soldier from the Civil War was honored.

In East Los Angeles, an observance was held at the Mexican All Wars Memorial in Raul R. Morin Memorial Square.

The Children of the Light Foundation paid tribute in Beverly Hills to slain children, including Sherrice Iverson, a 7-year-old who was sexually assaulted and killed during Memorial Day weekend in 1997.

In Orange County, events were held in Fullerton, Yorba Linda, Seal Beach and Santa Ana. The Fullerton observance featured a speech by Marine Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, who arrived at Loma Vista Memorial Park by helicopter.

The Placentia Symphonic Band and the Fullerton Community Band played at the Richard M. Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda.

In Seal Beach, Navy Capt. Robert Thomas Jr., commander of Submarine Squadron 11, spoke at a service at the Submarine Veterans Memorial, and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) presented a Purple Heart medal at Eisenhower Park to Mark Miller, a veteran wounded in Vietnam.

At Santa Ana’s Memorial Park, a group called Sonido Mexico serenaded an 85-year-old former soldier in Spanish. One of the group’s members, Anais Gonzalez, 19, once lived next door to the man, Jose Aguilar, who fought with the 34th Infantry in the South Pacific in 1944-45. She said she wanted to show her respect by dedicating the song in his honor.

“He never talks about the war much, but he’s such a nice man,” Gonzalez said. “We just wanted to do this for him.”

The event, which was sponsored by the League of United Latin American Citizens, drew about 70 people. The theme was to recognize men and women who were born in other countries but lost their lives fighting for the United States.

Also honored was Army Sgt. Sandra Rosales of Westminster, whose husband, Army Staff Sgt. Victor A. Rosales, died April 13, 2004, while they were in Iraq.

Rosales and her husband were born in Mexico, arrived in the United States about 17 years ago and became citizens after they joined the military.

Her husband, Rosales said, died when his convoy was ambushed.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re black or white, yellow, purple or whatever, when you’re in the military and you’re wearing that uniform, we’re all soldiers,” Rosales said.

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Times staff writer David Reyes in Orange County and Times wire services contributed to this report.