VETS WENT TO WAR FOR GYM - AND WON.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY

NORTH HILLS - You look at their faces from last year, from that final picture they had taken together before getting kicked out of the gym, and you just knew these guys would be back.

They weren't used to losing. They never ran from a fight when they were young soldiers wearing this country's uniform, and they sure as hell weren't going to run from one now as old vets using the Sepulveda Veterans Administration gym as a physical and emotional lifeline to the past, present and future.

If the VA thought a little thing like some earthquake damage was going to drive these vets out of that old gym in September 1999 without a fight, the VA didn't know its own men.

They fought, then they fought some more - from North Hills all the way to the White House, where President Clinton signed an appropriations bill recently that included $1.7 million to repair and reopen that old gym.

And now, on the eve of Veterans Day 2000, guys like World War II Marine Ted Greig, who was there the day the American flag was raised on Iwo Jima, are getting ready to raise another flag.

One that will fly over the gym when it's reopened, and these men can come home again.

The wheelchair guys playing basketball, getting ready for the Veterans Wheelchair Olympics, and the chemical dependency guys hitting the punching bags, sweating out their demons.

To understand what that old gym means, you only have to look as far as Greig's closet at home. There's a cane in the back of the closet even his wife doesn't know about, he says.

The VA doctors gave it to him because that was the only way this old Marine was going to be able to get around on a knee that was so shot it wouldn't hold him up anymore. With the help of a cane.

``I got pretty depressed, sitting around doing nothing, a former Marine getting wimpy,'' Greig said Wednesday. ``Then, I walked into that gym one day and met the guys.''

Greig quickly learned one of the first rules of the gym. Nobody's allowed to feel sorry for themselves inside that old gym - or wimpy.

Whether you're limping in on a cane or pushing hard on the wheels of your wheelchair.

Inside of a month, Ted Greig wasn't wimpy anymore. He was tough again. The cane went into the closet, and he hasn't used it since. That was five years ago.

``It's not only the physical therapy the guys got out of that old gym, but the mental therapy as well,'' said vet Don Starlar.

``The camaraderie of being with guys in the same situation you're in, with the same memories and service to this country.

``It can't help but form a bond that becomes like family,'' he says. ``When that gym reopens, we'll all be walking in with our chests sticking out a mile because we went to war for it, and we won.''

Nobody knows yet exactly when work will begin to repair the gym for reopening, but the Veterans Advisory Committee says it has been assured it should start early next year.

``We're already planning a big celebration with the local congressmen and community members who helped us,'' said Steve Palmer, president of the advisory committee.

``It's been tough walking by the padlocked gym doors every day and knowing that so much valuable time had been wasted fighting the VA to open those doors for us,'' Palmer said.

``You see some of the guys around the VA, and they're just not the same. Physically, emotionally, they've lost ground since that gym was closed.

``It was their home away from home, and much more than that,'' Palmer said.

This Saturday, when they walk by the padlocked gym on the way to visiting the old vets in Building 99 who can't get out of hospital beds on Veterans Days, they won't be shaking their heads in anger anymore, the guys say.

They'll be smiling. Pretty soon, they'll be going home again.

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Photo:

Veterans who used the Sepulveda Veterans Administration gym in North Hills eventually won their fight for its renovation.

Phil McCarten/Staff Photographer