SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA AND THE PERSIAN GULF CRISIS : Lines Form to Right and Left at the Protests

Last Friday night, 60 peace demonstrators stood quietly along Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena while passing motorists honked in support and flashed peace signs.

That same night in Claremont, peace activists along Arrow Highway jumped back in alarm as angry motorists there swerved close to the curb and shouted obscenities at the demonstrators.

Attitudes toward the Persian Gulf War are dramatically split in the San Gabriel Valley.

On one side, teen-agers new to anti-war politics and gray-haired activists who cut their teeth on Vietnam hold candlelight vigils calling for an end to the fighting.

On the other side, military veterans, Republican Party activists and a few San Gabriel Valley mayors wave the American flag in support of American troops.

Down the middle are hospitals and social service agencies offering counseling for those traumatized by the war.

For Jack Nounnan, 58, of Claremont, the Persian Gulf War is another crisis in his eight years of activism with the Coalition for Peace and Justice in the Pomona Valley. “We concentrated on the anti-nuclear movement, Central America and President Reagan,” Nounnan said.

Now, coalition members express opposition to the Gulf War with nightly vigils at Indian Hill Boulevard and Arrow Highway. The vigils began in November and were supported by passing motorists, Nounnan said. But after the fighting began, motorists were angry, which Nounnan attributes to memories of Vietnam war protesters.

“Peace is patriotic,” Nounnan said. “We saved lives. People forget that if it hadn’t been for the Vietnam protesters, we would have lost more lives. We weren’t going to win that war anyway.”

Like Nounnan, Joy Frilot, 49, was active in the 1960s’ anti-war movement. A member of the Peace and Justice Committee of All Saint’s Episcopal Church in Pasadena, Frilot organized Friday night vigils in Pasadena for the last three weeks. She said today’s anti-war protesters are “a much more diverse group of people . . . including those whose brothers, sons and husbands are in the gulf.”

“There are people who probably have thought for 20 years about the political destruction of war and there are a lot more people of faith,” she added.

The “faith-based” opposition includes the American Friends Service Committee, a pacifist group founded by Quakers during World War I. The 40-year-old Pasadena office recently put five draft counselors to work. They now field 50 phone calls daily and hold meetings drawing 75 participants, said committee worker Linda Lotz.

The anti-war movement has also drawn in youths like Claremont High School senior Matt Warshaw, 17, who gathers at noon daily with six other students to hold peace signs in the school’s central quad.

“For me, war is just an unacceptable way of solving problems,” said Warshaw, who hopes to enter college to study international relations. He says that although some teen-agers are joining the anti-war movement simply to rebel and “be radical,” others are seriously studying the issues.

That search to understand has characterized some of the demonstrations at San Gabriel Valley high schools, educators said. Student protesters have walked out of class at Blair High School in Pasadena, Bonita High School in La Verne, Mountain View High School in El Monte, San Dimas High School and Pomona High School.

In Pomona, 200 students left classes, and another 70 walked to City Hall last week. The students were not only protesting the war but also wanted the school to provide them with daily information, said Pomona Principal Mike Phillips.

“While they were in violation of the rules, I can’t help but be proud that they are beginning to be aware,” he said.

It was those high school demonstrations, however, that galvanized Lou Hernandez to put together a weekend rally of support for U.S. troops. “The young kids were out there protesting, and nobody was standing up, so I decided it would be me,” said Hernandez, 42, an Army veteran who heads the U.S. Vietnam Veterans of Southern California.

Hernandez summoned more than 100 veterans, some of them in military fatigues, to march in front of Azusa City Hall on Sunday morning. He hopes to draw 1,000 participants to a second rally in February.

“When we were at war in Vietnam, we heard about the demonstrations, and it just destroyed us,” Hernandez said. “I’ve been out now for 21 years, and it still hurts me. The scars remain.”

Bill Geller, 26, an activist with the Pasadena Republican Club and the Pasadena Young Republicans, also hopes to draw supporters of President Bush and of the troops to a rally at 10 a.m. Saturday at Colorado Boulevard and Garfield Avenue in Pasadena.

“Most people are not going to be vocal because not many people are going to say they support war,” Geller said. “But Saddam Hussein is not really somebody that can be talked to, and the only way to solve anything was by going in.”

For Sierra Madre Mayor George Maurer, the support is more personal. Maurer, 68, a World War II veteran, has been tying yellow ribbons to street poles and trees in his city. The city is also decked out in American flags that the City Council last week ordered displayed from street lights.

“Supporting the troops, I think that’s the important thing,” Maurer said. “Whether you’re for it or against it, they’re there and need our support.”

Azusa Mayor Eugene Moses, a Korean War veteran who helped Hernandez organize the rally Sunday, asked his city to adopt an Army platoon to send letters and gifts to soldiers in the gulf. “Getting support from home is the greatest thing for our troops,” he said.

Meanwhile, few have attended counseling seminars at hospitals and social service agencies, but the number of phone calls are increasing, workers said.

Callers, mainly wives of servicemen stationed in the gulf, say they are depressed, anxious, fearful and suffering from nightmares, said Susan Stauffer of Las Encinas Hospital in Pasadena. “Nobody wants war, but their husbands made a choice and a personal sacrifice,” Stauffer said.

Still, she said, callers ask: “ ‘Do we really need to be at war?’ That’s the big question.”