PORT HUENEME SHOWS ITS COLORS.

Byline: James Bemis

For much of the week following the Jan. 31 crash of Alaska Airlines Flight 261 off our shores, I was in Northern California. Thus, for the short time our area was in the media spotlight, I saw Ventura County through an outsider's eyes, so to speak.

This moment on the national stage spoke volumes about our neighbors, and most of what it said was very good.

The outpouring of grief over the loss of 88 lives touched the nation. From public officials to private citizens, the good people of Port Hueneme responded with heroism and compassion to their unexpected - and unwanted - call to duty.

Several images burned themselves into our memories.

--On Silver Strand Beach, cameras repeatedly panned a 6-foot-high memorial cross, erected the day after the crash, adorned with flowers and rosary beads. A tiny angel statue sat at the base, next to a pair of handprints in the sand.

--Memorial services were held on the Port Hueneme Pier by the Baptist Church, on Silver Strand Beach by the Fellowship Church, at St. Anthony's Catholic Church and at Ventura's Surfer Point by the Ventura Surf Club, where members paddled out to sea to place wreaths in honor of the crash victims.

--Port Hueneme resident Kim Gunter decided to organize a vigil ``for a few people'' in the parking lot of Hueneme Pier. Hundreds showed up.

--At the edge of Mugu Lagoon, members of the Apache, Chumash, Lakota Sioux and other tribes gathered in a circle for a ceremony designed to escort Flight 261's victims into the next world. While drums beat and flutes played, participants chanted and sang to their Creator.

What accounts for this outpouring of grief and compassion among local residents for the lost lives of 88 strangers? Why were so many people from so many cultures touched by this untimely event?

It's easy for sociologists and psychologists to account for the brutish, Darwinian behavior we so often read and hear about. Even the least educated person understands the survival of the fittest. No one needs to spell out why Peter robs Paul.

But how do you explain the equally frequent examples of people's charity toward strangers who will never be able to acknowledge them? To the economist, the anthropologist and the biologist, this motiveless benevolence is irrational, not justified by any of their analyses. Science offers us no answers here, and never will.

Call it empathy or agape or even random acts of kindness; courtesy and compassion are facts of human nature. We simply are made with a lovely, tender and gracious side which all the world's ugliness cannot erase.

If your theories cover only the war of all against all and other pathologies, then it misses much of human behavior. Yes, people can be incredibly rotten toward each other, as each day freshly attests. But also within us is a deep love of kindness, mercy, beauty, gallantry and nobility that no studies can explain.

Before the crash, few people around the nation had heard of the seaside community of 33,000 known as Port Hueneme. But as a kid, I grew up in the Hueneme area, spending entire summers on the beaches there. Much of my formative years were spent at Hueneme Pier, Silver Strand and other now-familiar sites, getting to know many people just like the ones we're talking about. For the most part, they're average folks - with a little bit of an independent, bohemian streak to keep things interesting.

Sometimes, though, ordinary people show us extraordinary things. I'm the last one to consider myself an optimist; the older I get, the more firmly I believe in original sin.

But one's understanding of human behavior can't be complete without taking into account our compassion and deep yearning to do good for others. Our friends and neighbors in Port Hueneme demonstrated this eternal truth that always seems to confound the ``experts'' - reminding the world again of the better angels of our nature.