Riding Out the Storm : Coping: Letters, prayer and support groups may prove to be ideal therapy for those trying to weather fears of the Gulf War here at home.

It concentrates the mind wonderfully, wrote Samuel Johnson, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight.

Or, he might have added, when a country collides with war.

For when a nation bleeds it is changed forever. Usual thoughts of more ordinary days seem vacant, even silly before news that is fresh, grim and awful. The images of war persist, then become indelible:

Of . . . sad, dazed faces of soldiers beaten into meaningless confession. Also, one young proud, grinning, handsome, vital face to start a new roster of American dead for military histories and hometown monuments. And hometowns that have barely healed from the last war.

Of . . . an ephemeral hope, because it was only months ago when a wall fell and there was glasnost and perestroika and the world said peace had broken out and this would indeed be the best of times.

But now, again, fear at home. “I have to take pills so I can sleep. I’m afraid something very bad is going to happen to him . . . . “

Soberness. “It is not the bright new world as quickly as we thought . . . . “

Confusion. “Mr. Romero, they said one died . . . . “

Anger. “If they saw one face of the women and children they’re bombing they would have to stop this madness . . . . “

Sadness. “The Jewish people have been hurt too many times . . . . “

Resolve. “Appeasement does not bring peace . . . . “

For some Americans at home, the emotional shifting of living in a country at war has been slight. Or non-existent.

Many veterans of previous wars remain insulated because they have been there. Horror is an old emotion, they say, and best denied. You live, you die. Life must go on.

“Gosh, other than to write to them and pray for them, that is about the extent that I can do,” said World War II veteran Jim Hollway of Santa Monica.

Other Californians are temporarily toning down their days. CNN is viewed before videos. Society parties have been postponed or canceled.

Yet in the daily lives of many, many people, the war has made modifications that reach far and may even approach permanence.

Prayer has become a habit with one family. A high school student says she will be forever aware of the frailty of life. And the war has produced an epiphany for one social volunteer who recently turned formal political activist.

Prior to 3:35 p.m., Pacific Standard Time, Jan. 16, Mona LaVine of Santa Monica was concerned primarily with the war on hunger. Her hot meals program serves 300 homeless each night. There are always more homeless than meals.

“So it is interesting that in a very short time our government could house a half-million soldiers in a desert without electricity or plumbing, but they will not house the homeless in our own country,” commented LaVine. “So I am joining the peace demonstrations. I have committed myself to march once a week at the Federal Building in Westwood.”

Such personal involvement, counsels Hyla Cass, assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at UCLA, is ideal therapy for weathering Desert Storm. Especially for those with friends and relatives serving the military.

“Sending letters, creating support groups, being busy in a positive way . . . I think taking an active stand is very therapeutic,” she said. “Prayer is important. I think that when people have a spiritual connection--both their own personal connection with family and community--it gives them a support, as opposed to isolation.

“People become much more disturbed when they are having this experience in isolation.”

Cass offers this emotional survival kit for the home front:

* “Positive things can come out of everything. Seeing our lives in view of life and death, and how important or unimportant our activities are . . . this may be a motivation to put more meaning into our lives, our daily activities and our relationships.”

* “Stay informed. People feel comforted by being informed. Even if the news is bad, the not knowing can be worse.”

* “Reach out to people. Begin to do things that are more significant, particularly things that can ultimately be used to prevent wars. As a psychiatrist, I think that peace begins inside. We wouldn’t have wars if people felt OK about themselves. War is a push to power and power has to do with an inner feeling of powerlessness.

The young--like Rachel Braude, a senior at Crossroads School, Santa Monica--are particularly vulnerable to the thunder and dismemberment of war. In this conflict, Braude, 17, is finding fear, confusion and a sadness for children in the Middle East “who are probably my age and have my feelings and who are now in bomb shelters and wearing gas masks.”

Braude knows her life and their lives will never be the way they were before bombs fell on Baghdad.

“Our lives might be back into the normal trend, just stuff we do every day,” she said. “But there will always be the thought in the back of your head that people are dying and what is the point? I don’t think we can be normal again until it’s over. And even after it’s over, there will be consequences.”

For the McCarthys of Newbury Park, a life with no particular closeness to religion has been transformed into family days filled with prayer. It began with a telephone call from a friend who was forming a prayer chain. So Dodie McCarthy, husband Don, their two boys and a 4-month-old daughter gathered to pray for peace.

“We took it very seriously,” McCarthy said. “The boys came downstairs in the living room. I said: ‘I know we never do this and you might not know the words to these (prayers), but I want you to do this anyway.’

“And we said them out loud together.”

Dodie McCarthy said there was calm and resolution in the praying. It will become a more prominent part of their lives.

Activist Bob Zirgulis of Culver City has always risked injury by protesting the protesters. He has supported rebel movements in Nicaragua and Afghanistan as a veteran organizer of the International Human Rights Watch.

Now his right-wing mission is to disrupt anti-war protests. He burned the Iraq flag at one demonstration. At another, he called antiwar activist Ron Kovic a “self-pitying crybaby.”

Now, says Zirgulis, 38, telephone calls have threatened his life. His future must be one of total caution.

“I take my children to school . . . I will not let them walk,” he continues. “I’m not some country-club Republican. I go into the lion’s den. But I will not give in to terrorist threats.

“My children know, if something happens, that I’m a casualty of war. And if they try to get me through my children, I will get to them.”

The unique buildup and final countdown of this war, says licensed clinical social worker Maurie Cullen, was a difference producing enormous public apprehension.

“This didn’t catch us by surprise,” she explained. “We were just waiting for the first person to make the first move and I think part of the anxiety came from apprehension . . . of not knowing when that (first strike) would happen.

“Having a deadline date, but never being sure, and always hoping that it wouldn’t come to war. . . . “

But it did come to war. Also to a flood of information, threats from Iraqi leaders, visible precautions against terrorist attacks--and unprecedented hyper-vigilance in America.

“I’m hearing fears that this is not a war that is being played by any particular rules,” Cullen said. “There is security at airports. Concerns for biological warfare. The poisoning of the water supply . . . with people very frightened about these possibilities that are out of their (public) control.”

Cullen says she is working with some “very fearful” flight attendants. “You deal with it openly and say there certainly is a possibility (of terrorist attack) and you deal with the anxiety as it comes up.

“I don’t think I can falsely reassure anybody and say it is not going to happen. We can only hope that it doesn’t. And I don’t think it is healthy to crawl into a shell and hide from everything.”

The war, says Cullen, also has moved Americans by reminding them of their mortality. Therein lurks another downside: A reduction of the defense of denial.

“The defense of denial . . . that keeps us from being preoccupied with our death, so that we don’t dwell on that through the course of our day,” Cullen explained. “Of course, we’re all going to die but none of us wants to think of that. War lowers it (defense) considerably.”

And Cullen says if the war continues and casualties mount the condition will worsen. “If we have major losses among our (military) people, we’re going to have college-age students and young adults very much aware of their mortality.

“I think it is going to send a lot of people in for therapy . . . to really resolve that and to be able to go on.”

Mary Helen Aldapa of East Los Angeles says she has found her own “priorities changing” since war broke out. Those priorities continue to shift as time goes on. Because her son, Mike Aldapa, 25, a USC senior and Army reservist, may be called to war.

“Right now I just keep thinking that Mike could go any time,” Aldapa said. “If he does go, that will change all of our lives.

“So I try not to get upset over things. We don’t argue or fight. Every moment is precious right now. Every day is precious.”

Magdalena Beltran says the Gulf War “has had a profound effect not only in my life . . . it stands to also effect the lives of my family members.”

Among those family members are two sisters with husbands--one a U.S. Marine Corps active reservist--who could be called to Operation Desert Storm.

“In the event that my sisters’ husbands are drawn into this, they already know what they have to do,” Beltran said. “They want to move closer to Mom so the kids will get the warmth from their grandmother and have that support. It is their survival instinct as mothers and wives.”

“Our family realizes that you just can’t go about things as though nothing has changed. And the potential for more change is around us.”

Beltran, a vice president of Coronado Communications, a Los Angeles public relations firm, and an executive with Comision Femenil, an organization advancing the futures of Latinas, says her family is closer now.

“My family’s need to talk to one another has really increased,” she said. “This is a time we need to talk about what is going on.

“Personally, I asked myself: ‘What am I going to do? How is this going to change me? Am I just going to feel bad about it?’ Those things I am still trying to work out.”

Home. Soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines in the gulf say it is the thing that keeps them going. Those back home say it is the thing that is providing them renewed comfort and new security.

Vicky Chavez of Upland, a director of Proyecto Latino, a group that assists Spanish-speaking victims of violent crime, remembers being at home and in bed with her husband.

Said Chavez: “I said to him: ‘I feel so secure about being at home.’ And all of a sudden I realized that home is so important to me. I was looking up at the ceiling and saying: ‘Manuel, the whole world is on fire. I see those missiles on TV . . . but here it is safe.’ ”

Esther Wachtell, president of the Music Center, has felt a similar reassurance. “All of us in our family have been gravitating toward home, being together at home and talking to each other on the phone,” she said. “At the end of the day, I can’t wait to get home to see my husband.”

If the war ends soon, or if it drags into spring, some changes occurring among Americans will doubtless be continued.

Others will fade--even if the war does not fade--like New Year’s resolutions.

Yet professional celebration planners see an indefinite moratorium on a popular theme.

They say there should be no Arabian Nights parties for awhile.

Times Staff Writers Robin Abcarian, Michael Quintanilla, Kathleen Hendrix, Jeannine Stein, Herman Wong, Beth Ann Krier and Kathleen Kelleher contributed to this story.