OUR LAGUNA:War, Walk veterans celebrate their victories

War veterans and Walk to Save the Canyon veterans celebrated on Saturday their mutual admiration and anniversaries, which included war stories, picture taking and a memorial stroll up Laguna Canyon Road.

Representatives of all branches of the U.S. military met with environmental warriors at 8:30 a.m. on Veterans Day in front of the Festival of Arts grounds to share memories of battles in which they served — on foreign soil to preserve America’s liberties and, closer to home, to preserve Laguna Canyon as nature’s gift to Orange County.

Some of them participated in both.

“Gigi and I both were on The Walk,” said Ben Blount, commander of the Laguna Beach Post of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Blount served in Europe in World War II, from Normandy to Belgium, where he met his future wife, who was active in resisting the Nazi invaders of her country.

The Blounts and veteran Don Black, who also attended the celebration, have been honored by the Patriots Day parade.

Ken Anderson, who served in the Air Force in World War II, and his wife Bette, also walked The Walk, held Nov. 11, 1989.

“I remember 17 years ago,” said Jim Law, an honored U.S. Marine Corps veteran. “It seems more like seven years ago. Lida Lenny [the late founder of the Laguna Canyon Conservancy and mayor] asked me to say a few words.”

Law talked about memorable “walks” in military history: the Death March on Bataan; the Marines in Korea who were surrounded by the Chinese Army on the border between North and South Korea and walked out, but not without their wounded and dead; and the Marines who walked across the African desert to clear the pirates out of Tripoli.

“The Walk 17 years ago was just as important to the people who live here,” Law said.

Veterans at the celebration also included Bill Sandlin, the new commander of Laguna’s American Legion Post; Richard Moore, who recalled ditching his plane in the North Sea; Bill Kremmer, who served in the U.S. Air Force; and Bill Lilientthal, who served in the medical department in the Lusan campaign and stayed on to serve the Philippine people who had been without medical care throughout the Japanese occupation.

“Sometimes it seemed like we were running a well-baby clinic,” Lilientthal said.

Arnie Silverman said he is still cold from the winter of 1950-51 that he spent in Korea.

“My best memories are of my comrades,” he said.

Don Hurlbut did double duty, serving in the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard.

Navy vet Norm Abbod served on a destroyer in Korea.

“Typically, we did all the dirty work — fire everything we had and then get the hell out,” Abbod said.

Walk veterans at the celebration included Carolyn Wood, president of the Laguna Canyon Conservancy; Richard Henrikson, who helped organize the media campaign, reunited for the first time in 17 years with Charles Michael Murray, who helped conceive The Walk; BC Space Gallery owner and photographer Mark Chamberlain, who documented Laguna Canyon Road on film; Harry Huggins, executive director of The Walk and one of the organizers of the anniversary celebration; Ann Weisbrod; Linda and James Rushing, who video-taped The Walk and Laguna Beach mayor pro tem — at least until the December council meeting — Toni Iseman.

“I was there, and it was wonderful,” Iseman said.

On hand for the ceremonies: Murray’s son, Oliver, 4, and his nephew A.J. van de Water, who was 9 in 1989; Silverman’s grandson, Adam Cook, 16; war veteran Harushi Tetsuka and his son, Donovan, and Korean-born Eunna and Dr. Samuel Park, who came to honor the veterans.

Walk and Tell

That evening, Murray and Huggins hosted a potluck at Endangered Planet Gallery. Chamberlain recounted the history of the Laguna Canyon Road “tell.”

Tell is an archeological term for evidence of a prior civilization, which is what Chamberlain and his partner Jerry Burchfield feared would be Laguna’s fate.

“Laguna is an island of uniqueness in the sea of sameness of Orange County, and there’s a red-tile tsunami coming over the hill,” Chamberlain said then.

Chamberlain and Burchfield identified Laguna Canyon Road as crucial to the identity of Laguna Beach and determined to save it, if only on film.

They filmed in daylight, at night with no lights, at night with lighting, and they took their lives in their hands to film the middle of the road.

Under the guise of being documentary photographers, Chamberlain and Burchfield were preparing to do the tell, possibly the largest mural ever made at 636 feet long and 34 feet high at its highest point — a telling argument against development.

“We had an army of volunteers erecting the mural and more than 200,000 photographs submitted from which more than 100,000 were selected,” Chamberlain said.

“What we put together struck a chord with a lot of people.”

Little did the City Council know what it had wrought when it refused a request to have a rock concert on the site of the tell.

“The next day, I got a call from Harry who said he had been talking to Charles and they had an idea,” Chamberlain said.

They all began talking — about a populist expression of opposition to development in the canyon — The Walk.

The first council member to buy into the proposal was Realtor Martha Collision, Chamberlain said.

“We met with Martha, Ken Frank, Chief of Police Neal Purcell and the fire chief, and debated dates,” Chamberlain said.

Nov. 11 was particularly tasty to open space supporters because it was the Saturday before the Orange County Board of Supervisors was scheduled to vote on — many thought rubberstamp — the Irvine’s Co.’s proposal for the massive Laguna Laurel development and the San Joaquin Hills toll road, both of which Laguna vehemently opposed.

Phone banks were organized under Huggins’ direction.

“We had no idea that we were going to have thousands and thousands of people,” said Walk volunteer Loretta Martin.

The actual count was never verified. Estimates ranged from 6,000 to 9,000 — the media rounded it out to 8,000.

Chamberlain thought it was more like 10,000 or 11,000.

Huggins paid tribute to the contributions of Wood and Lenny.

Henderson, who handled the media on the day of The Walk, said the buzz began about two weeks before the event. Murray not only got Jose Feliciano to record a radio promo, he got 11 stations to run the 30-second ad every hour.

Famously, the late Fifth District Supervisor Tom Reilly, who had ignored opposition to development in the canyon, is supposed have said after The Walk, “Why didn’t you tell me you were serious?”

Oh boy, were they serious.

Among the guests at the potluck: Karen Feuer-Schwager, Lisa Marks, Wood, the Blounts, Charlie Robinson and Marion Meyer.