Respect and Relaxation

Despite chilly temperatures and a gloomy sky that at times threatened rain, Orange County residents did their Memorial Day routines Monday, driving to beaches, filling up parks and attending ceremonies to honor the nation’s war dead.

Huntington Beach lifeguards, who patrol one of Southern California’s most popular beaches, said about 45,000 people had come to the sand by noon. Their faith was rewarded in the afternoon when clouds dispersed, leaving hazy sunshine and “a pretty nice day, considering,” said lifeguard Lt. Michael Beuerlein.

At Irvine Regional Park, where the overcast skies didn’t clear until late in the afternoon, people were waiting at the gate when ranger Raul Herrera arrived at 7 a.m. Six hours later the park was full. “I was surprised, what with the weather,” Herrera said. “It hasn’t deterred anybody. It’s not sunny, but it’s calm and comfortable.”

On this traditional first day of summer, awnings had been set up at Loma Vista Memorial Park in Fullerton to protect the audience from the sun. Instead, they shielded about 500 people from occasional raindrops falling from low, dark clouds.

It was somber weather for a solemn occasion, the 58th year that people have gathered there to honor veterans of wars stretching to the Civil War. Some 3,000 veterans are buried here, 41 of whom died during the past year.

An 11-foot obelisk, erected in 1922, stands as a monument to the war dead. Plaques inside the mausoleum honor those buried elsewhere.

Five hundred flags that at one time draped the coffins of local veterans lined the cemetery’s entrance and avenues. Three thousand tiny white crosses and miniature American flags marked veterans’ headstones.

Earl Milton, 78, drove to the ceremony from Long Beach because this year’s event honored his part in World War II--the merchant marine. These civilian seamen were exempted from the draft so they could man Victory ships and supply the war effort in Europe and the South Pacific.

These seamen died in proportionally higher numbers than any branch of the military, according to the U.S. Maritime Administration. About 700 of their ships were sunk, costing more than 6,000 lives.

“It was just fate,” Milton said. “You just didn’t know what was going to happen to you.”

On one rough Pacific convoy, the ship ahead of his broke in half and sank. His ship, the Clarksdale Victory, sank off Alaska with its crew on the voyage after Milton left the ship.

Merchant seamen’s contributions have gone largely unrecognized, said Capt. Francis X. Johnston, western regional director of the U.S. Maritime Administration. Johnston was the main speaker at the ceremony and said he wanted to set the record straight.

The merchant marine, he said, has been of critical importance in the victories of every U.S. war since World War I. Sailing aboard unarmed or lightly armed vessels required “fortitude and indifference to danger,” Johnston said.

He quoted generals who had praised the merchant marine for its “absolutely critical” contributions.

During the early years of World War II, military campaigns were delayed because of lack of supplies, he said. Eventually, the merchant marine established a 6,000-mile supply line across the Pacific that fueled the American victory there.

“I hold no branch in higher esteem than the U.S. merchant marine,” said Gen. Douglas MacArthur after his Philippines campaign, according to Johnston.

The nation owes such veterans “profound appreciation” because “you are the means by which this nation became great.”

It was not until 1988, however, that the federal government officially recognized service in the merchant marine as military service. Now the merchant marine receives the same benefits as do other military branches, Johnston said.

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There were musical tributes--”America the Beautiful,” “My Buddy,” “God Bless America”--and some tears as Marines in uniform escorted people to lay wreaths at the foot of the monument.

At the end, two buglers, one echoing the other, played taps, and a rifle squad from the Fullerton Police Department fired three volleys in tribute.

And in the ceremony’s closing prayer, Monsignor John Sammon from the Orange County Archdiocese offered thanks for “a deeper realization of the price of peace and freedom.”

The Fullerton ceremony is the oldest in Orange County, according to A.B. “Buck” Catlin, a retired Navy commander and former Fullerton mayor.

It dates to 1939, when Fullerton’s patriarch, C. Stanley Chapman, went to the cemetery to place crosses and flags on the graves of 25 veterans, Catlin said. The tradition was continued by Chapman’s employees, then assumed by the city’s American Veterans Memorial Assn.

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Other Memorial Day ceremonies were scheduled at El Toro Memorial Park in Lake Forest, where a speech from retired Marine Maj. Gen. Marco A. Moor and a flyover by two World War II-vintage P-51s were scheduled.

At Pacific View Memorial Park in Newport Beach, Maj. Gen. Terrance R. Dake from El Toro Marine Corps Air Station was scheduled to speak.

An address by Dorothy A. Avery, former member of the Women in the Air Force Service Pilot program, was scheduled at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Cypress.