FLAG FLAP VETS PANEL WANTS REBEL BANNER BACK.

Byline: Troy Anderson Staff Writer

Six years after a version of the Confederate flag was removed from a Los Angeles County display, the county veterans advisory commission wants it restored to the Civic Center Mall.

The veterans said the flag deserves to fly in the Court of Historic American Flags downtown because it is part of U.S. history. But at least one county supervisor and a spokesman for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People said it is inappropriate.

Called the Stars and Bars, the flag displays three bars and seven stars, predating the more commonly known Confederate flag with diagonal bars and stars in the margin.

Sonny Sardo, a Shadow Hills resident and chairman of the 10-member veterans commission, said the flag pays homage to the soldiers who died beneath it in battle.

``People die under certain flags, and flags have meaning to people,'' said Sardo, a Vietnam War combat veteran who lost a leg to a land mine. ``People have died under the American flag, and that flag will always be sacred to people. People died under the Confederate flag for those ideas, right or wrong.''

However, Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who sponsored a motion in 1994 to remove the flag and is the board's only African-American, said the flag is offensive.

``It's sort of like if we had the Nazi flag up there,'' she said. ``What do you think the response would be? Do you think the Jewish community would feel upset by it?

``I think every time someone passed by there - not only people who are African-American, but descendants of those who fought on the other side - they really resented it.''

The board-appointed commission has one vacancy and includes two African-Americans, three Latinos, a Filipino and three whites. It voted unanimously in June to recommend that the supervisors return the flag to the Civic Center Mall between Hill Street and Broadway.

The commission decided to wait until after the March election to make its request.

``It's a matter of historical accuracy. It's not a matter of election politics. I chose to hold the item rather than cause any embarrassment to any person involved,'' said Joseph Smith, a retired Marine colonel and director of the county Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.

So far none of the supervisors has agreed to put the request to a vote.

Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky, Michael D. Antonovich and Don Knabe declined to comment. Supervisor Gloria Molina said she is opposed.

In 1994, however, the board voted to take down the Stars and Bars flag after it was mistakenly replaced with the Confederate battle flag, Smith said.

In its place, the county hung a Vietnam Prisoner of War/Missing in Action flag, which Sardo said would have to be taken down to make way for the Stars and Bars flag. However, another prisoner of war/MIA flag is across the street, he said.

Geraldine Washington, executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP, said flying even the early version of the Confederate flag would be divisive.

``We have enough issues in California that are divisive and mean-spirited without introducing another issue that could separate rather than unite our citizens,'' she said. ``I would say that we just don't need anything else that would divide us.''

Aaron Levinson, director of the San Fernando Valley office of the Anti- Defamation League, said the ADL does not oppose putting the flag back up.

``Our reaction is that it sounds like it's in a historical setting,'' Levinson said.

``As far as we know, no white supremacist or extremists use the Stars and Bars flag as a symbol of hate. That further lessens the complications here.''

The Stars and Bars flag flew first in 1970 with 17 other flags, including the Taunton flag of 1774; Betsy Ross flag of 1777; Star-Spangled Banner of 1795; Lone Star flag of Texas of 1839; California Bear flag of 1846; Fort Sumter flag of 1859; and Civil War flag with 33 stars.

Edwin Bearss, retired emeritus chief historian for the National Park Service in Washington, D.C., said similar Stars and Bars flags are flown in historical flag courts across the country.

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Photo: (color) Sonny Sardo, chairman of the county veterans advisory commission, says the Stars and Bars pays homage to soldiers who died beneath it.

Michael Owen Baker/Staff Photographer