Iraq’s legacy includes heroes

In November, after writing about the anti-war mother of a Los Angeles soldier killed in Iraq, I got a strongly worded note of objection.

It was from the soldier’s father.

Asa Ashcraft, a Vietnam vet who has long been divorced from his son’s mother, was blunt in the criticism he e-mailed me from his home in Las Vegas.

“You used my son as a pawn,” he wrote.

The criticism stung, not just because it came from a man who had lost his son — 24-year-old Army Sgt. Evan Ashcraft, a San Fernando Valley native killed in 2003. It also stung because there was some truth to the father’s criticism.

On Nov. 17, I wrote that President George W. Bush’s new book, in which he explains his justification for the war, was a self-serving distortion. For the column, I also interviewed Evan’s mother, Jane Bright, who told me that she holds Bush responsible for her son’s death. Both of us have opposed the war from the beginning.

Asa Ashcraft said in his e-mail that he had no malice toward me or Bright for our political views but that he found my use of his son’s life and sacrifice “disgraceful.”

If I had wanted to offer a defense, I would have said Bright’s sorrow and anger were real and worth writing about. We all need to be reminded of the cost of this distant war, which has become all too easy for Americans to ignore. But the better response, I felt, was to ask if I could go see Asa Ashcraft and listen, rather than talk.

We met at the Las Vegas residential community Ashcraft manages. His wife, Beverly, was there too. They were both actors once, with Mr. Ashcraft using the stage name Asa Teeter when he appeared in TV shows and films. He also happens to be the son of one of the McGuire Sisters.

Beverly was primarily a theater actress, but she and Asa both left entertainment. During the time Evan and his little brother Drew were growing up, they lived in the San Fernando Valley.

Mr. Ashcraft told me that enlisting in the military was something Evan wanted to do very much. In fact, his father said, he had been rejected by the Navy after flunking a drug test, and he spent months cleaning himself up so he could give it another try.

“He was involved with the wrong group,” Mr. Ashcraft said of Evan’s troubled teen years. Evan’s onetime best friend was Ryan Hoyt, a current death row inmate convicted of killing a teenager in the year 2000 on orders from Jesse James Hollywood, a Valley drug dealer also serving time for the murder.

Mr. Ashcraft said he used tough love with Evan, telling him that in his house, he had to live by his father’s rules. That led to a two-year estrangement that Mr. Ashcraft describes as “two of the hardest years of my life.”

But Evan eventually came around.

“He said, ‘Dad, I’ve gotten it out of my system. I’m back now,’ ” Asa Ashcraft recalls. After that, he said, “We talked about everything, the way fathers and sons do.”

When Evan joined the Army in 2000 at age 20, he made his father proud. Mr. Ashcraft went to see his graduation from boot camp, and Evan’s commanding officers told him his son was going to be a great soldier and a leader.

“I saw a man among men,” said Mr. Ashcraft. Beverly said she saw more pride, focus and purpose in Evan than she’d seen before. After boot camp, Evan married his Valley sweetheart, Ashley, who also helped balance him.

Mr. Ashcraft said Evan was upset that his brigade was the last to go to Iraq. He tried to hide an injury during training, so as not to miss the chance. When he finally got to Iraq, he wrote home, telling his father he might prefer to be a firefighter instead of a cop after the war because he’d been shot at enough on the battlefield. On one occasion, he saved the lives of two mates hit by enemy fire.

Mr. Ashcraft sent Evan a camera, and some of the photos that were mailed home arrived after Evan was killed. He died on July 24, 2003, when his Humvee was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in northern Iraq.

Asa Ashcraft drew some comfort from the outpouring of love for Evan, whose funeral drew a crowd in the Valley. And Evan’s fellow soldiers sing his praises to this day.

As for Mr. Ashcraft, who supported the war initially, he now believes Iraq was a mistake, and he feels the same way about the war that he fought too. That’s a lot for a man to carry, and the weight of it is clear in Asa Ashcraft’s somber reflection and distant gaze.

But to Ashcraft, his son will always be a hero, having answered a call for his country. There can be no outcome in Iraq, no review of time and history, that will change that.

“Some good has come of it,” he said about Iraq. “You can’t deny that.”

Evan’s decision to serve was his and no one else’s, Beverly said. It was what he wanted.

Mr. Ashcraft smiled when he told me how much his son loved where he grew up, and especially loved summer breezes. Evan was buried on a hill at Oakwood Memorial Park in Chatsworth.

“Let him rest,” Mr. Ashcraft said. “He’s on that hill with a breeze, looking out over the Valley.”

steve.lopez@latimes.com