VETERANS RALLY FOR ONE MORE FIGHT.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

It wasn't apathy that held the crowd size down Tuesday morning, the protesting vets say. It was simply old age catching up with a lot of their buddies.

It's the toughest enemy the guys from World War II and Korea have to fight these days. Their own deteriorating health.

It's robbed a lot of them of their mobility, and keeps them at home and in hospital beds when they want to be out on the line for one more fight.

That's why the crowd of veterans protesting cutbacks at the Sepulveda, West L.A. and Long Beach veterans facilities only numbered about 100 Tuesday morning, not 1,000, they say.

Old age, not apathy.

If Department of Veterans Affairs officials think otherwise, they'd be badly mistaken, Joe Romo told the small but vocal group gathered in the designated protest area in front of Staples Center.

``For each veteran here, there's a thousand more behind us,'' said the West L.A. Vietnam vet and former chairman of the Mayor's Advisory Committee on Veteran and Military Affairs.

From his wheelchair in a parking lot with no shade from the scorching heat, no water and no toilet facilities, Vietnam Marine vet Jim Vought of Northridge applauded Romo's comments.

``You wonder if all the delegates, politicians and reporters inside that place realize they wouldn't be here today having a big national political convention if it wasn't for the veterans out here,'' he said, nodding toward Staples Center.

``Hell with the convention,'' said Grant Olsen from the Sepulveda VA. ``There wouldn't be a United States today if not for the vets.''

So then, why do a couple of 75-year-old World War II vets like Arnold Conder and Fred Dunn of Long Beach have to take the Blue Line into L.A. and walk a couple of long blocks in scorching heat, leaning on canes, to protest to get that point across?

Why do Valley vets like Steve Palmer, Bill Robb and a dozen other men in their 70s have to hop on the Red Line in North Hollywood on a Tuesday morning for a 90-cent round-trip ride downtown, only to get kicked off at the Blue Line transfer in L.A., because they wouldn't throw away their protest signs like the transit police ordered them to?

The men said to hell with that, and walked the rest of the way. Eight blocks in 90-plus-degree heat so they could stand in front of Staples Center to get their point across at the Democratic National Convention.

That they're mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore.

Whether it's a gym and other facilities closing at the Sepulveda VA, or services being cut back at the Long Beach VA, or land earmarked for veterans' use being leased out to private concerns at the West L.A. facility, these vets are fed up.

``Veterans are not something you dump on and throw away,'' said Sepulveda VA vet Darion Dubois, taking the microphone on the protest stage.

``We need to stick together and make the VA work the way it promised us it would. To paraphrase Winston Churchill: Never has so much been taken from so many by so few.''

Off to the side of the stage, Harry Coleman and John Hansen crunch some numbers as the protest winds down.

The VA is sick and tired of hearing and reading about these vets from the Valley who won't back down and go along with the program.

Hansen, assistant secretary of veterans affairs, wants to know what it's going to take to strike a peace bargain at Sepulveda.

About $1.2 million for a new gym should do it, Coleman, one of the protest leaders, tells him.

Hansen says he's talking with his boss, Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs Hershel Gober, this weekend. He promises to get back to Coleman, he says, walking away.

``We've heard that one before,'' says Steve Palmer, head of the Veterans Advisory Committee at Sepulveda.

``Yeah, we have,'' Coleman says, walking over to help a couple of wheelchair vets pick up their equipment and head back to the Blue Line for the trip home.

A bunch of their Sepulveda VA buddies whose health didn't allow them to make the trip downtown were waiting to hear how the protest went.

The guys didn't want to let them down.

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Photo:

Vietnam veteran Lawrence Charles, right, and Gina Brooks, left center, join the protest Tuesday outside Staples Center.

Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer