http://www.ocregister.com/articles/cemetery-664876-park-veterans.html
IRVINE – In less than a decade, runways where fighter jets once lofted Marines into the air could become acres of green grass dotted with white headstones marking the Southern California Veterans Cemetery.
That image, for many veterans and their families, provides comfort.
But for a group of Asian residents that live near Irvine’s Great Park, the image is appalling – any cemetery would violate a strong cultural taboo of living near the dead.
Now, even as the state Department of Veterans Affairs prepares to request federal funds to build the cemetery, residents in the neighborhood – including people who aren’t worried about the bad feng shui – are pushing city officials and others to make sure it’s built somewhere else. Property values, many say, will be damaged.
And a wild card emerged this week. Orange County Supervisor Todd Spitzer, who supports the veterans cemetery at the Great Park, said a 288-acre parcel near Anaheim Hills might serve as a cemetery where veterans could be buried.
But for Bill Cook, chairman of the Orange County Veterans Memorial Park Foundation and the man who has led the fight to put a cemetery on the former El Toro air base, the issue is just as sacred.
“That site represents. .. where thousands of American teenagers last stood alive on American soil,” said Cook, 68, a Mission Viejo resident and Vietnam War veteran who served at El Toro.
Cook and others who back the cemetery at the Great Park point to a future need. About 130,000 veterans live in Orange County, and nearly 1.9 million live in California. Most served in wars of the 20th century, including World War II, Korea and Vietnam.
But another issue might be distance.
California has nine national cemeteries, five of which are accepting new interments. Two of those are in Riverside and Miramar.
Less than one-third of the 922-acre Riverside National Cemetery is developed. About 240,000 people are either buried or interred in Riverside, and the site is taking about 8,000 new arrivals annually. Miramar, which opened in 2010, has 313 acres and room for 235,000 veterans.
The cemetery proposed for the Great Park would be developed by the state, not as a national cemetery; the rules for national cemeteries say they have to be at least 75 miles apart.
Cook and others have worked to get a cemetery at the Great Park since the El Toro base closed in 1999.
Opponents of the park organized only last year, following news reports about the park getting state backing. Since then, word of mouth has spread and residents have turned up regularly at Irvine City Council meetings.
In the past seven months, more than 500 people signed a petition at change.org asking for the cemetery’s relocation. Most list their address as Irvine, but a few list locations in China, including the province of Shandong and the city of Beijing.
Dongping Huang, speaking at a recent meeting, said she lives in Irvine’s Woodbury village neighborhood, about two minutes from the Great Park. She said she was shocked when she found out last year that there was a cemetery proposed “in my backyard, next to my son’s future school.”
“We respect the veterans. ... They fight for our freedom,” she said. They should rest in a “quiet, beautiful area,” not amid soccer fields, Huang said.
If the cemetery is built, she said later, she probably would move.
Their concerns seem to be gaining some political traction.
Tony Pan, a leader of the community group opposing the cemetery, said he met earlier this year with Spitzer, who represents much of Irvine, and learned of the site near Anaheim Hills.
This week, Spitzer confirmed that.
“I have identified 288 acres in my district that may serve as a cemetery for both civilians and veterans,” he said via email.
The land is open space near the intersection of the 91 express lanes and the 241 toll road, part of 2,500 acres donated to the county last year by the Irvine Co.
However, Spitzer still supports the Great Park proposal, according to the supervisor’s director of communications. And no formal proposal for a cemetery on the county’s open space has been made.
“Any county cemetery proposal that I consider for the public or veterans will be an independent project and not in competition in any way with the effort at Great Park,” Spitzer said.
Cemetery opponents were hoping to host a community meeting Monday, at which both Irvine Mayor Steven Choi and Councilwoman Lynn Schott are scheduled to speak. But Choi and Schott pulled out when fliers circulated intimating they were in favor of relocating the cemetery, something both said isn’t true.
Still, it’s likely the fight will continue.
Though the state formally identified the 125-acre Great Park site last year, that was only a first step to establishing the cemetery. State officials need millions of dollars and don’t plan to apply for federal funding until July 2016 at the earliest. If they get funding, it still might be years before a cemetery is developed.
Meanwhile, Irvine is likely to become less inclined to accept the cemetery.
The first official Great Park housing community, Pavilion Park, opened two years ago. But Beacon Park, slated to open this summer, is closer to the site selected for the cemetery. Future developments will be even closer.
Many of the buyers in these neighborhoods are Asian and come from cultures that follow some version of feng shui, a cultural practice that guides design and lifestyle.
In feng shui, having a cemetery near homes or schools provides a constant reminder of mortality and death. Putting a cemetery near homes and a school – Portola High School, the fifth Irvine Unified School District high school, would be within sight of the cemetery – is insensitive and culturally taboo.
Some residents shudder when they consider children walking by headstones on their way home from Portola High or the echoes of referees’ whistles or golf balls from the planned adjacent golf course bouncing off of headstones.
Some are reluctant to talk publicly about their opposition for fear of being portrayed as anti-veteran or anti-military, when the location – not the cemetery – is the true concern.
Overall, nearly 40 percent of the residents of Irvine identify as Asian, though many don’t necessarily follow the same cultural practices.
In March, Cook went to a groundbreaking for the California Central Coast Veterans Cemetery, in the city of Seaside, slated to open in July 2016. “That was the result of a 25-year effort up there,” he said.
“We are deeply emotionally attached to this. It’s as close to Gettysburg as you’re going to get in Orange County,” Cook said.
“Don’t hide us all some place in the hills.”
Contact the writer: 714-796-2221 or sdecrescenzo@ocregister.com
Opponents of the military veterans cemetery proposed for the Great Park in Irvine spoke out at a recent meeting of the Irvine City Council. SARAH DE CRESCENZO, STAFF
By the numbers
3: State veterans cemeteries in California:
the Northern California Veterans Cemetery, the Yountville Veterans Cemetery
(which inters only residents of the Yountville Veterans Home and eligible
dependents) and the California Central Coast Veterans Cemetery, under
construction in the city of Seaside
131,229: Veterans living in Orange County
1.89 million: Veterans living in California
Source: CalVet; Census Bureau
What's happened, and what's next
Veterans met with Great Park management in 2013 to
ask for land at the former base to be set aside for a state veterans cemetery.
At the start of 2014, then-Assemblywoman Sharon
Quirk-Silva, D-Fullerton, introduced Assembly Bill 1543, which would give
$500,000 for CalVet, the state's Veterans Affairs Department, to do preliminary
design work on a cemetery plan.
In July of that year, the Irvine City Council
agreed to set aside up to 125 acres at the Great Park.
Gov. Jerry Brown signed AB1543 in September 2014.
The next month, he made a surprise stop in Irvine to tour the site.
In January, representatives from CalVet and the
Department of General Services visited the land, starting the evaluation process.
CalVet plans to submit a request for federal
Cemetery Grants Program funds to design, develop, construct and equip the
cemetery by July 2016.
If funds are granted, the earliest development
could practically begin would be 2018. Irvine has agreed not to develop the
site with certain uses, including cemeteries, until Dec. 27, 2017.
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