Fun, Tears on a Day to Remember : Nation’s Fallen Honored at Parades and a Vietnam Wall

CANOGA PARK —  Lisa LaSarge-Keuper, a small U.S. flag stuck behind her floppy court jester hat, was having fun Monday without forgetting the essence of Memorial Day.

“We’re free today because of them,” she said, referring to military veterans who gave their lives for the United States. “It’s a shame it’s only one day a year to celebrate it. It should be every day.”

LaSarge-Keuper, 36, and her husband, 31-year-old Chuck Keuper--who wore a tall red, white and blue hat and a star-spangled T-shirt--were among tens of thousands of spectators who watched the 8th annual Canoga Park Memorial Day Parade.

Across Southern California, communities marked the solemn holiday with special events that often generated laughter and fun, but sometimes generated tears and rekindled painful memories. To many, the day presented an opportunity to display the freedom preserved by the efforts of those remembered.

Deep in the heart of Topanga Canyon, for example, about a dozen military veterans kicked off the annual Topanga Days Parade. The eclectic and free-spirited event was filled with dozens of nature-themed floats as well as myriad runners, roller skaters, bikers and horseback riders.

Mark Scully, a Vietnam War veteran, joined other members of a group called “Veterans for Peace” in carrying Old Glory during the parade. The veterans wound their way up Topanga Canyon singing a song written by Scully that called for an end to all wars.

“The reason for us being vets and being here is so that we can stop war,” Scully said. “We want to bring an end to war in this country like there has been an end to slavery.”

At a replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall in a Rancho Palos Verdes cemetery, the experience was so emotional that volunteers handing out paper and charcoal for those wanting to trace some of the 58,196 names, also supplied Kleenex. It is a visual shock to see so many dead humans’ names, which gain personality as viewers are drawn in closer by the many mementos strewn beneath them--the flowers, the letters, the photographs.

“Even people who do not have a connection to the war end up feeling the emotion and sharing the experience,” observed Ray Frew, president of Green Hills Memorial Park and a Vietnam veteran, who had worked for more than three years to bring one of the replicas to the Southland’s largest Memorial Day observance.

Thousands of people have trekked past the aluminum and polyurethane wall on this visit, and it and two other traveling walls are booked through 2000, a continuing demand that has surprised even the three Vietnam veterans who built the first “Moving Wall” in 1984.

There are the visitors with more distant relatives--like Jose Gotera Soriano, who came Monday to make several tracings of his first cousin’s name to send to family in the Philippines. There are the schoolchildren on a class assignment for the Vietnam section of their high school history classes. And there are those who hopefully wore the metal bracelets for soldiers held prisoner or missing in action, only to have them never come home.

A small bouquet was affixed with a card that read: “I wore your bracelet for seven years. The day it broke, I knew you were @ peace. Denise.”

But most of the visitors who still come two decades after the fall of Saigon are the veterans themselves.

Why is hardly a puzzle to former U.S. Army Sgt. Willie Wong of Cypress, who has seen all three of the touring walls and has made four pilgrimages to the original chiseled stone wall in Washington, D.C.

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Visiting the wall guarantees a reunion of sorts, with people who shared his wartime experience--which for him was a trauma that left him weighing 93 pounds and sent him into years of group therapy.

“This is a chance to rekindle the feelings . . . and deal with them, to make new friends and see old friends,” said Wong, who wore his olive drab fatigues on Monday. “I came home from Vietnam in 1969, but psychologically I didn’t come home until 1986.”

At a more festive parade in Canoga Park, many spectators lining the two-mile route were whooping, hollering or blowing plastic horns as they watched more than 150 attractions that included floats, veterans groups, marching bands, horses, clowns, and antique cars and motorcycles.

Organizers said an estimated 55,000 spectators lined the route, which began at Sherman Way and Owensmouth Avenue. Many carried small flags or wore red, white and blue hats and T-shirts. Grand marshal Christopher Nance, a KNBC-TV weatherman, pointed to the cloudy skies and quipped: “I can fix this.”

In the crowd were spectators of all shapes, sizes, ages and backgrounds. Bert Silverstein, who served in the Army during World War II, was busy taking photographs of one parade participant after another. Pride in his country is absolute, he said.

“In my feeling, there will never be another country like this,” said Silverstein, 70, a red cap reading “Veterans of Foreign Wars” perched on his head. “With all our faults, and we’ve got a lot, what country can you do what you want as long as you behave yourself? . . . They don’t put you in jail for speaking up. In some countries you’d be shot.”

A block or so away from Silverstein on Sherman Way, 6-year-old Christina Gerrish was laughing heartily at a bunch of parade clowns. But even Christina, who was schooled on the meaning of the holiday by relatives such as aunt Estella Orellana, 22, knew that the true reason for Memorial Day involved the military.

“Because of soldiers,” the little girl said. “Because they die sometimes and because they do battle.”

Organizers said the parade each year is meant to be traditional and respectful of those who gave their lives for their country. “It’s been very well received,” said Aline Hausman, a parade official and executive director of the Canoga Park/West Hills Chamber of Commerce, a parade sponsor. “We make it imperative to make our parade in keeping with the Memorial Day theme.”

The Topanga Canyon parade was far less married to tradition.

Lamar Hawkins decorated a float themed after Topanga Canyon Elementary School’s upcoming musical titled “Lost in the Woods,” with boughs from laurel, sumac and pepper trees. “In this community you can do any kind of float you want,” said Hawkins, the musical’s director. “Traditionally you can show up on a bicycle and still be in the parade. . . . This is a very loose and loving community.”

Indeed, the crowd included a man on stilts dressed in flare-leg flag pants, a kid zooming around on a motorized skateboard, a truck carrying a full brass band, and even a cart pulled by a white goat.

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Jean Walker, a 40-year resident of Topanga Canyon, turned out with her goat Sampson, who was harnessed to a special cart she had purchased for the event. “I’ve never done this before,” Walker said with a laugh. “In fact I just trained him yesterday.”

The crowd of spectators who lined the canyon cheered as the parade made its way past. Some of the children riding floats threw handfuls of candy into the crowds. In return, some of the spectators threw water balloons and used garden hoses to douse the floats and their participants.

“Every year, people try and have unusual things in the parade that wouldn’t be in any other parade,” said John Crawford, who has lived in Topanga Canyon since 1974. “It’s a chance to be eclectic and it captures that spirit of what parades used to be.”

Times staff writers Amy Pyle and Doug Shuit contributed to this story.