from la times archive
Informal War Memorial Loses Its Final Battle With City Hall
The tribute took root in a park in Irvine. Despite support from the public, it fell victim to laws banning such displays on municipal property.
The Region
You know the story, right? she asked, nodding toward the wooden stakes planted in tight rows. How a guy put them up, just because he couldn't sleep. The war in Iraq bothered him. These are for its dead.
"It's a beautiful graveyard," Mary Laurin said softly. "Why would they want to take it down?"
At the corner of Yale and Bryan avenues in Irvine's Northwood Community Park, a makeshift memorial has become local lore. It appeared in March, 10 days into the war in Iraq, as the brainchild of a local medical company executive.
Only a few wooden stakes, topped with nametags for the dead and votive candles to be lit at sunset, dotted the corner at first. Two weeks later, a core of regulars was coming nightly to pay tribute. As the number of dead grew, so did the number of mourners.
Sunday, it will be taken down, a casualty of laws prohibiting such displays on property. It was supposed to be dismantled months ago. But like the candles that flicker into the night, the memorial found a reserve of fuel: people who see those wooden stakes as something bigger.
Visitors call the shrine intimate, speaking of the memorial as if it had sprung from the earth. There were no design squabbles or funding debates that tend to pock tributes such as the bronze Vietnam War memorial in Westminster. The park never was the site of sparring protesters, the fate of a sidewalk Sept. 11 memorial in La Habra.
The simplicity of the Irvine memorial gave it purity; its location gave it peace. Its narrative made it legend.
Day 9 of the war. Asher Milgrom watches the news. The 44-year-old decides he must do something. Something spills out in the garage. He fashions a clear glass cup for a candle and a red plastic cup for flowers onto a stake about 5 1/2 feet tall. He makes 30, one for each American killed.
The next day, he heads to Northwood, an 18-acre park. In sight of a baseball field, a playground and a bus stop, Milgrom births the memorial. Each stake has a sheet of paper listing the name, age, rank and military branch of its soldier.
That night, six people light candles at sunset.
The flames blink in the glow of stoplights and passing traffic.
So it has gone every night since. This week, the stakes numbered 201 as more markers were added to honor those killed since the war's official end. Neighbors have added photos and biographies from the Internet: Marine Pfc. Tamario D. Burkett, 21, Buffalo, N.Y. Killed March 23. A yellow silk flower is tied to his stake -- price tag: $4.50.
Hah! A mere 201! We've got thousands now.
Well Asher, you and your chinky wife Alice had better think even bigger than the 8K names you
have space for. You and that impotent Andy Zelinko will be shamed by your monstrous creation. You're both chickenhawks, pussies who suck the teat of mindless patriotism, nursing death.
Asher Milgrom is no medical specialist. He's a brain-damaged zionist who runs a skin clinic. That's not medicine that's a scam. Andy Zelinko is a retired pig, a catholic scumbag.
The only memorial to an ongoing war in the US. With space for more names, no less.
And the memorial will be a site of counter-displays. Freedom of expression, baby.
