A lesson on service

COSTA MESA — Col. Gary Lopez is always happy to see children gathered to celebrate Veterans Day. Given some of what else he’s seen, it’s hard to blame him.

On Friday, the career United States Marine, who just returned from his second deployment in Iraq, was the featured speaker at St. John the Baptist Catholic School’s annual ceremony. With the entire student body and a number of parents and veterans in the audience, Lopez voiced his feelings about the service and spoke momentarily about his own recent experiences.

“I know there’s a lot of questions about why we’re there, but after walking the streets of Babylon and meeting the Iraqi people, they’re good people, they’re simple people and they want the freedoms we have,” Lopez said.

Lopez had been one of two veterans scheduled to speak at St. John, but the other, World War II Apache “code talker” Luis Armijo, was too ill to attend. Armijo, 87, won renown for helping guide home Enola Gay, the warplane that dropped an atom bomb on Hiroshima in 1945.

The hourlong ceremony, held in a white tent outdoors on the St. John campus, was the school’s sixth annual Veterans Day celebration. Sister Mary Vianney, the principal of St. John, said it had grown increasingly easier to find veterans to speak to the students.

“Now that we’re six years into it, people expect it, so they contact us,” she said.

Even without Armijo, the event still encompassed a number of generations, as different grade levels sang songs from wars from the past 200 years. The second-graders performed a medley of two Civil War classics, “I’m Going to Join the Army” and “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” while the third-graders offered George M. Cohan’s 1920s anthem “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

City Councilwoman Katrina Foley made short remarks, mentioning to the audience that her brother is serving with the Army in Iraq. Fr. Norbert Wood, who led a prayer for all veterans, asked the crowd to remember their sacrifices. “Living or dead, we owe so much to those brave men and women who have fought for our country,” he said. “We stand here today as a Catholic school in a free country. If the Empire of the Sun had won, or the Third Reich had won at the end of World War II, we would not be here today.”

Eighth-grader Sarah Ortiz, a member of the St. John the Baptist Handbell Choir, said celebrating Veterans Day helped her put her life in perspective.

“It’s really a day for honoring all the people who gave their lives for us to have the greatest country in the world,” said Sarah, 13, of Mission Viejo.