Riverside County to honor Mojave Cross advocates

Henry and Wanda Sandoz with the Mojave Cross in the background after the Nov. 11 installation ceremony. (David Olson/Staff photo)

by David Olson
Riverside Press-Enterprise

The Riverside County Board of Supervisors Tuesday is scheduled to honor those who helped save the World War I veterans memorial cross in the Mojave Desert east of Baker.

The cross was the subject of more than a decade of First Amendment court battles.

It sits on public land, the Mojave National Preserve, and a former National Park Service employee sued to have it removed, because he saw it as an unconstitutional government endorsement of Christianity. He received backing from the American Civil Liberties Union.

Supporters of the cross argued that it was erected 78 years ago by World War I veterans to honor their fallen colleagues, not to promote religion.

After two federal courts agreed with the ACLU, the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010 ruled that a land exchange, under which the land around the cross was converted into private property, passed constitutional muster.

The Veterans of Foreign Wars now owns the acre under and around the cross. A new cross was installed on the land on Nov. 11, Veterans Day. It’s the latest of several versions of the cross that have stood on the site.

Among those scheduled to be honored Tuesday are Henry and Wanda Sandoz, who had cared for the cross for 30 years and ceded five acres of their land to the national preserve as part of the land exchange.

American Legion District 21, who represents about 4,000 veterans in Riverside County and helped defend the cross, and retiring U.S. Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands, who first negotiated a land exchange, are also scheduled to be honored.

Supervisor John Benoit will lead the ceremony, Rees Lloyd, director of the California Legion’s Defense of Veterans Memorials Project, said in a news release.

A Mojave Desert cross brings a lot of things to bear

The head of the Mojave National Preserve had little reason to think that an exchange over a memorial built in 1934 would spur a 13-year saga full of litigation, vandalism, political theater and theft.

A new cross in the wings
Henry Sandoz hefts a new cross that he made out of 5-inch-diameter pipe. With friends and supporters, he hopes to paint and raise it atop Sunrise Rock by Veterans Day. (Thomas Curwen / Los Angeles Times / September 21, 2012)

By Thomas Curwen
Los Angeles Times

Long before the promise to the dying man, the Buddhist stupa and the Supreme Court decision, there was the land. Once it belonged to no one, then it belonged to everyone, and that's when the trouble with the cross began.

Mary Martin, superintendent of the Mojave National Preserve, read her mail in the morning, and on a spring day in 1999 she picked up a letter signed by Sherpa San Harold Horpa. It sounded like a joke.

Horpa began by describing "a tasteful cross that stands on a small hill." The hill, known as Sunrise Rock, was in the preserve off Cima Road, six miles south of Interstate 15.

Horpa had a special request: He wanted to place another religious symbol on the site.

"I proposed to install a stupa equal in size, color, material and taste to the cross," he wrote.

Martin had to look up what a stupa was — a Buddhist shrine — and that afternoon she composed her reply: "Any attempt to erect a stupa will be in violation of federal law and subject you to citation and or arrest."

Martin was aware of that cross, which was erected in 1934, and she suspected that one day she would have to remove it. But at this point it was a low priority. The preserve was in its fifth year, and she and her colleagues were busy buying property from ranchers, preserving the habitat of the desert tortoise, and converting the old Union Pacific station in Kelso into a visitor center.

She never heard from Horpa again. Nor did she have any reason to suspect that this exchange would begin the 13-year saga that would see the cross on Sunrise Rock become an object of litigation, vandalism, political theater and theft.

Buono and the stupa

Herman Hoops thought writing a letter would be a good way to test the park service's attitude toward the cross. When going up against the government, he recently explained, the last thing you want to present are the facts; they can fight you on the facts.

So he came up with the idea of the stupa.

His friend Frank Buono had been visiting him that spring at his home in Jensen, Utah, just outside Dinosaur National Monument. Buono had first brought up the cross in a conversation about the Mojave National Preserve. Both men — retired park service employees with more than 20 years each — felt that a religious symbol on federal land was wrong.

With the sun setting on the river canyon of Dinosaur, Hoops sat down at his computer, and they began composing. They made the argument for the stupa, "complete with prayer wheels and flags," and Hoops came up with the pseudonym.

When he opened Martin's reply, Hoops wanted to continue with the pretense, but Buono told his friend to hold off. He had contacted the American Civil Liberties Union, which had agreed to investigate the cross to see if there might be a case.

Buono loved the California desert, but the Mojave was special. He had been an assistant superintendent at the preserve for 11 months before budget cuts in 1995 forced him to Joshua Tree National Park.

The year before — as Congress debated the legislation that would create the preserve — he served on a committee to explore the logistics of managing the land. Walking through the halls of the Department of the Interior on his way to a reception after the signing ceremony for the Mojave in October 1994, he says, was the highlight of his career.

"It was like the Vatican for me," he said. "I hold the park agency to the highest of standards — as any citizen should."

When Buono first saw the cross in 1995, he wasn't sure if it was on federal land. The Mojave was a checkerboard of grazing allotments and private holdings, and after retiring, he read the old maps and confirmed his suspicions.

The Sandozes

Martin received the first letter from the ACLU in October 1999, urging that the cross be removed because it was a violation of the 1st Amendment. Ten months later a second letter arrived, this time setting a deadline of 60 days.

By then Martin had researched the cross and had learned about the promise that Henry and Wanda Sandoz made to a sick friend who had maintained it over the years. The Sandozes had agreed they would be its caretaker.

When their friend died in 1984, the cross had been missing for a couple of years, and Henry built a new one. This cross was vandalized, and he finally decided to replace it.

In violation of park regulations, he and Wanda gathered with family and friends at Sunrise Rock on Palm Sunday in 1998. They bolted a cross, made of 5-inch-diameter pipe, to the granite and filled it with concrete. Afterward, they crowded beneath it barbecuing hot dogs.

Because the cross — raised to commemorate veterans of World War I — wasn't the original, Martin felt she had to take it down. But she didn't want to make a decision that would be unpopular among Mojave residents who resented the changes that the park service had brought to their lives.

Martin needed an ally and found one in Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands). Throughout 2000, Lewis had stayed apprised of the ACLU's complaint. The group's accusation, he wrote, was "ridiculous," and as a member of the House Appropriations Committee, he would take legislative action, if necessary, to save the cross.

By late fall, Martin had exhausted her options, which included a personal appeal to the Sandozes to take the cross down. She drafted a letter for the park service's regional director to send to the congressman. "Absent legislative intervention," it read, Martin would have no choice but to remove the cross.

Two weeks later the congressional budget passed with language introduced by Lewis preventing the use of federal funds to remove the cross. Three months later, the ACLU filed its lawsuit; Buono was a plaintiff.

When a judge in Riverside ruled that the cross couldn't be displayed, it was wrapped in a tarp that was fastened, Houdini-style, at the base by chain and a padlock. After being shredded by vandals, the tarp was replaced by a plywood box.

"It looked like a big Popsicle," said Dennis Schramm, who replaced Martin as superintendent of the preserve in 2005.

Artists painted landscapes that prominently featured the cross. Videos were shot in its shadow. A website was created, and the Sandozes were cast as crusaders.

In the end, the ACLU won. A federal district judge in Riverside ruled that the cross' presence on federal land conveyed an endorsement of religion. His opinion was upheld by the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.

The only way the cross could remain was if Sunrise Rock were privately owned. A compromise was arranged: a land swap between the Sandozes and the park service. The California office of the Veterans of Foreign Wars would take ownership of the property around the cross.

But a district court ruled against the compromise. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually took the case and determined that the ruling was flawed. The district court reconsidered and in April approved the transfer. By then the ACLU and Buono had stopped their fight.

Not long after the Supreme Court's decision in 2010, the cross was stolen and was never recovered.

Martin and Buono today

Martin, 61, is retired today and looks back with disappointment on the long turn of events.

"If Buono felt so strong about the cross, if he would have called and discussed it, I am sure we could have reached a solution without litigation," she said. "When I first met with the Sandozes, they were receptive to various solutions, but as the conflict continued, all sides seemed to become more entrenched in their positions."

Buono, 65, works part time for the park service teaching policy and law and is gratified that the courts ruled in his favor, the land swap notwithstanding. He similarly wishes the matter of the cross could have been resolved without going to court and is critical of the park service.

"The agency culture of the NPS is so risk-averse that it borders on paralysis, in particular when confronted with a wildly unpopular decision," he said.

Closed off
Henry Sandoz, 73, examines the cordon that the National Park Service has placed around Sunrise Rock. Sandoz and his wife, Wanda, plan to erect a new cross on the site. (Los Angeles Times / September 21, 2012)

Last July, the Sandozes — Henry, 73, and Wanda, 68 — and a few supporters met park service officials at Sunrise Rock to work out the final arrangements.

With temperatures close to 120 degrees, they walked the perimeter of the property. The park service has allocated $28,121 to pay for a cable to section off the property, signs to designate it as private property and a plaque to identify the cross as a war memorial.

The park service hopes to hand the 1-acre parcel over to the VFW by the first week in November, and the Sandozes plan to commemorate the site by Veterans Day.

Henry Sandoz has a new cross ready. Partly covered by plywood and an old washtub, it lies on the concrete floor of a barn — three pieces of pipe, cut by an acetylene torch, welded together and, as yet, unpainted.

Friendship takes High Desert couple to Supreme Court over controversial cross

Yucca Heights resident Henry Sandoz holds a painting of J. Riley Bembry's encampment, which was several miles away from his World War I memorial cross. His wife, Wanda, holds a painting of the cross. (Jim Steinberg/Staff)

Jim Steinberg, Staff Writer
Redlands Daily Facts

YUCCA HEIGHTS - It was 1974 when two dune buggies with frames made of pipes and powered by Corvair engines roared into a remote encampment in the Mojave Desert where the travelers heard an elderly man lived.

When the recluse in the cabin came out, he was invited to join the group for hamburgers.

"I haven't had a hamburger in six months," said the man, J. Riley Bembry.

And thus began a friendship that would span a decade for Henry and Wanda Sandoz.

Little did the young couple from the tiny community of Mountain Pass southwest of the Nevada state line know that because of this relationship, they would later be enveloped in a legal dispute that would take them into the chambers of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Nor did they have an inkling that Henry would be awarded the highest honor from the U.S. Veterans of Foreign Wars, something that happened last summer at the VFW's annual meeting in San Antonio.

Bembry wanted to be known by his middle name, Riley, not his first name, John, "because he said it was more distinguished," Henry said at the couple's home in Yucca Heights, an unincorporated area near the city of Yucca Valley.

Bembry was an Army medic during World War I, and by some accounts, he also taught soldiers how to use explosives, a skill he would later use to develop mines in the Mojave Desert.

After the war he initially was a butcher in Los Angeles and several neighboring cities. He frequently traveled into the Mojave Desert and over time became hooked on prospecting.

Around the time of the Great Depression, he was living full time in the desert, and an encampment of other World War I veterans grew around his cabin.

Many of them had come to the desert to heal from the various forms of physical and emotional damage caused by the war, the Sandozes said. And in the Great Depression, gold fever wasn't hard to catch.

In 1934, Bembry and some of his neighbors, mostly veterans,put a seven-foot tall wooden cross on a rock outcropping a few miles from his cabin. The site was a granite rock outcropping near Cima Road, about 15 miles south of today's 15 Freeway and 80 miles east of Barstow.

A sign below the cross said, "To honor the dead of all wars erected 1934 by members of Veterans of Foreign Wars, Death Valley Post 2884," according to a history compiled by the office of Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands.

Death Valley Post 2884 no longer exists.

Last week, an 11-year battle with the American Civil Liberties Union over that cross monument came to an end.

U.S. District Judge Robert J. Timlin in Los Angeles signed an order ending the ACLU lawsuit and paving the way for the original memorial site to be transferred from the federal government to the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

The ACLU had alleged that a cross on federal land violated the separation of church and state.

To make the legal settlement happen, Henry is giving up five acres of Mojave Desert land he has owned for decades in exchange for the one-acre site of the cross on Sunrise Rock, which will ultimately be transferred to the VFW.

"We have been at this a long, long time," said Lewis, who in 2003 championed legislation authorizing the land swap. "People from World War I started this. And people like Wanda and Henry Sandoz and many other marvelous people have stepped up to support this memorial."

Lewis also said, "Few people these days have any idea what the World War I veterans went through in those horrendous times."

Henry recalls the first time he saw the cross in the 1960s. At the time, a railroad boxcar that served as a clubhouse was at the base of the hill. The remains of a concrete patio, once used for dances, were alongside it.

A few miles away, Bembry's compound included an assay office, to determine the quality of his gold and silver samples, and a powder magazine, for dynamite.

He had a propane-powered refrigerator but few other conveniences in his cabin.

Wanda recalled that on that first picnic, she forgot to bring mayonnaise.

Bembry volunteered his opened mayonnaise jar, which had been kept unrefrigerated and was seven or eight years out of date.
"Obviously, we didn't have any," Wanda said.

A "pet" badger lived beneath his cabin for a time, the Sandozes said.

Bembry also fed rabbits, chipmunks and other critters that frequented his cabin, which included a "picture window" made from the windshield of a 1920s Studebaker.

The couple reminisced that once their oldest daughter drove Bembry into Barstow to renew his license for high explosives and to buy more dynamite. And that Bembry's skills as a butcher were appreciated by many during deer season.

Bembry didn't speak much about World War I, Henry said. About the only thing he can recall is that Bembry said he saved soldiers' lives when the 1918 flu pandemic hit camp by giving them whiskey and Bromo Quinine.

Not one soldier taking his "medicine" died in the epidemic, which claimed between 50 million and 100 million people worldwide, Henry recalls Bembry telling him.

Bembry, who took his own "medicine," did not contract this highly contagious flu, even though he cared for many soldiers infected with it, Henry said.

As two roadrunners and numerous quail raced across their backyard, the Sandozes recalled how in the spring of 1983, Bembry showed up at a previous residence near the Molycorp mine where Henry worked, saying he wanted to stay with them for a while because he wasn't feeling well.

"He ended up staying a week," Wanda said.

They didn't realize until much later that Bembry had probably suffered a small heart attack.

In the fall of 1984, Bembry became ill and asked a neighbor to drive him to his daughter's home in Norwalk. The Sandozes kept thinking he would recover, but he never did.

His daughter brought the cremated remains to the Mojave Desert cabin, where more than 100 attended the funeral.

Many at the funeral believed it was time to bring back the sunrise services on Easter, which had been a tradition for decades but had lapsed.

That tradition has continued most years since Bembry's death.

"As a little girl, my wife remembers going to Easter services there," said Pastor Larry Craig, 58, a missionary based in Newberry Springs who for some 27 years has traveled 110 miles to conduct sunrise Easter services at Sunrise Rock.

Although Bembry may not have attended Easter services at the cross he helped install, ranch hands, miners and others from a wide area across the Mojave Desert had a long tradition of attending Easter services at the World War I memorial site, Craig said.

Reflecting on the journey in the long battle to retain the memorial site veterans created in 1934, Henry, 72, said giving up the land wasn't an option.

"I owed it to Riley and to the veterans for all their sacrifices," he said.

Radical secularists won't allow a cross in the desert

by Newt Gingrich
Washington Examiner

In the vast desert between Los Angeles and Las Vegas is the 1.6 million acre Mojave National Preserve. Located within the preserve, in an area so remote that an hour can pass between cars traveling by, sits a seven-foot cross on the top of a hill.

There used to be a cross there, that is. Today, the cross is covered by a plywood box, looking for all the world like a blank billboard on a lonely rock outcropping.

The reason the cross is covered is as simple as it is dangerous: The cross is the latest target of radical secularists who seek to drive every manifestation of God and faith from our public spaces, however remote.

That these secularists would target a cross that sits literally in the middle of nowhere speaks to their fanaticism. That they would seek to destroy it speaks to their totalitarianism. For religious freedom to exist anywhere, it seems, is a threat to them everywhere.

For 75 years, what has become known as the Mojave Cross has stood on a remote outcropping in the desert known as Sunrise Rock. The cross was first erected in 1934 by the Death Valley chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars to honor the servicemen and -women who lost their lives in World War I.

For more than six decades, the cross stood, as it does at war memorials across the country, in memory of the American war dead. But about a decade ago, a park service employee in the preserve decided he was offended by the presence of a cross on federal land.

With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, he sued, arguing that the cross violates the constitutional prohibition on government establishment of religion. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals -- the same court that ruled the words "under God" unconstitutional in the Pledge of Allegiance -- agreed and ordered the cross removed.

But then Congress got involved and came up with a solution. The land the Mojave Cross sits on was transferred from the federal government to the VFW, thus removing the constitutional issue, for some, of a religious symbol on federal land.

But even that solution was not enough for the radical secularists. They've taken the case all the way to the Supreme Court, where justices heard arguments in the case earlier this fall.

It's anybody's guess how the high court will rule or if will rule on the merits of the case at all. But it's clear to the nation's veterans what is at stake.

Literally thousands of other monuments and memorials on public lands display the cross and other religious imagery. If the court finds the Mojave Cross "offensive" for the ACLU and its allies, the crosses and other expressions of religious faith that honor our war dead elsewhere are in jeopardy as well.

It's a tragic irony that the men and women who died protecting our religious freedom may be denied theirs after death.

For the Founders, religious liberty and freedom of religious expression were indispensable supports to political freedom. But for the radical secularists, the truth is just the opposite: They see religious freedom as an obstacle to their political project to remake America into something our Founders wouldn't recognize.

We've seen this kind of totalitarianism before. As we relate in our upcoming movie about Pope John Paul II and the end of communism in Eastern Europe , communists sought to systematically eliminate the cross in Poland in order to better control the Polish people.

As we enter the Christmas season, it's important for Americans of all religious faiths to understand how important a cross in the desert -- a cross they may never see -- is to the survival of our liberty.

We are a nation founded on the truth that our rights come from God, not government.

If we give a handful of radicals and an imperial judiciary the power to decide that they, not our Creator, grant us our rights, we will be giving them the power to take our rights away.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has published 19 books, including 10 fiction and nonfiction best-sellers. He is the founder of the Center for Health Transformation and chairman of American Solutions for Winning the Future. For more information, see newt.org. His exclusive column for The Examiner appears Fridays.

The many meanings of a cross

Opinion

The dispute over a cross in the Mojave points to how entangled religion and culture are.

By Gregory Rodriguez
Los Angeles Times

I'm all for the separation of church and state. I believe that government endorsement of any particular religious sect or tradition has a corrosive effect on both the state and the faith in question. But I also think the attempt to separate religion from government is veering toward a foolish, parochial and ultimately impossible quest to separate religion from culture.

Last week, the ACLU of Southern California's Peter Eliasberg argued the case of Salazar vs. Buono before the U.S. Supreme Court. The case, which involves a cross that has stood, in various forms, for 75 years as a memorial to World War I veterans in the Mojave Desert, elicited a heated exchange between Eliasberg and Justice Antonin Scalia.

In a debate over whether the cross, which is on property surrounded by the Mojave National Preserve, violates the 1st Amendment ban on the establishment of religion, Eliasberg argued that a cross "is the predominant symbol of Christianity" that "signifies that Jesus is the son of God and died to redeem mankind from our sins." Therefore, it shouldn't be allowed to "stand alone" as a war memorial in a national park. Scalia offered a different definition. "The cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of the dead," he said. The Times reported that Scalia "sharply disagreed" with Eliasberg.

Eliasberg responded: "I have been in Jewish cemeteries. There is never a cross on a tombstone of a Jew," he said.

Scalia wasn't persuaded: "I don't think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that the cross honors are the Christian war dead. I think that's an outrageous conclusion."

I see Eliasberg's point, but Scalia's notion that the cross has become a generalized symbol of memorial strikes me as true too. Sure, you might suspect that Scalia, a practicing Roman Catholic and a well-known conservative, is simply seeking an argument that would allow the cross in this case to pass constitutional muster, but he's also accurately pointing to how entangled religion and culture are.

Eliasberg's reading that the cross has a specialized religious significance symbolizing the son of God who died for mankind's sins seems way too narrow an interpretation. Does it mean that? Yes. Does it have other significance? Absolutely.

Consider another common symbol, the Star of David. It is a symbol of Judaism, but it is also an ethnic, national and political symbol. It'd be hard, then, to say that its significance is entirely spiritual or theological.

Sometimes, religious symbols have historical significance that in some contexts can transcend their theological meaning. Five years ago, under threat of a lawsuit by the ACLU, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to remove a cross from the county seal. In the iconography of the seal, which had a number of symbolic images on it, the cross stood for the Catholic missions whose founding in the late 18th century signaled the dawn of modern Los Angeles history. But the ACLU claimed it represented "an impermissible endorsement of Christianity by the county government." The supervisors didn't fight it, but they should have.

In his 1996 book, "The Truth of Broken Symbols," philosopher and theologian Robert C. Neville observed that in predominantly secular societies, religious symbols often lose their theological specificity and become broadly generalized. In fact, he points to the American military cemetery in Cambridge, England, where a "sign explains that a Star of David on a tombstone signifies the grave of a Jewish soldier whereas a cross signifies 'all others.' " Likewise, he notes that "clergy blessing governmental ceremonies are performatively invoking divine aid by their very presence but are likely to pray in terms so general as not to be specific to their own religion's symbol system."

Culture is moving toward greater syncretism, something you can see in the increase in interracial marriage and the election of a black president. As for religion, a recent survey found that Americans who don't identify with any religion -- now 15% overall and 22% of all adults ages 18 to 29 -- make up the fastest-growing religious "tradition" in the country.

The problem with the ACLU's approach to religious symbols is that it's zero sum and old school -- it is, dare I say it, puritanical. Its narrow vision could rob the public sphere of symbols we need to understand who we are, what we're about and where we came from.

The truth is that even as we become a more secular country, religion will continue to be an integral part of our society, history and culture. Indeed, our very notions of politics and good government are the legacy of zealously religious people. Even our ideals of religious freedom and church/state division have roots in the theological convictions of Colonial and Revolutionary-era Baptists and Presbyterians as much as in the Enlightenment. Even if we don't as a nation profess one faith or another, religion is at the core of American identity. To seek to root it out of civic life and culture altogether is not only impossible, it's silly.

Justices weigh constitutionality of war memorial cross

By Bill Mears
CNN Supreme Court Producer



A judge ruled that the Mojave Cross must be covered until a First Amendment issue can be resolved.



WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Supreme Court offered conflicting concerns Wednesday over a cross, erected as a war memorial, that sits on national parkland in the Mojave Desert and whether it violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

Conservative members of the bench suggested that Congress acted properly when it tried to transfer land around the Mojave Memorial Cross to veterans groups, an effort to eliminate any Establishment Clause violation. A federal appeals panel had blocked that land swap.

"Isn't that a sensible interpretation" of a federal court injunction banning the display on government property, Justice Samuel Alito asked.

But Justice Stephen Breyer was adamant that the government had not acted in good faith. "You are violating this injunction" that ordered removal of the cross, he told the government's lawyer.

The swing vote -- as he is in many hot-button issues -- may be Justice Anthony Kennedy, who questioned attorneys on both sides but did not indicate how he was leaning.

At issue before the justices is whether the display violates the first 10 words of the Bill of Rights: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."

More specifically, can one individual who protests the cross have legal "standing" to take his case to court and prevail? And do congressional efforts to minimize the appearance of a constitutional violation carry any weight? Find out more about the other cases before the court »

The 6-foot Latin cross was erected by the local Veterans of Foreign Wars in a remote part of the California desert in 1934 to honor war dead. It has been rebuilt several times over the years, and Easter services are held on the site every year.

The land now is part of the Mojave National Preserve, a unit of the National Park Service, encompassing 1.6 million acres, or 2,500 square miles.

A former Park Service employee brought suit, saying that such symbols represent government endorsement of the Christian faith. A federal appeals court ultimately agreed and rejected a move by Congress in 2003 to transfer a tiny portion of the land where the cross sits back to the VFW as a privately held national memorial.

The area in question is a prominent outcropping known as Sunrise Rock.

The appeals court noted that the land-transfer effort singled out the VFW for special treatment and that officials had rejected a proposal to erect a nearby Buddhist "stupa," or shrine. Jewish and Muslim veterans groups complain that the Mojave Cross symbolizes the sacrifice of Christian veterans, excluding other faiths.

The oral arguments focused almost exclusively on the congressional action to transfer the cross to private hands. That suggested a very narrow ruling in coming months, which would not produce a sweeping statement on when religious symbols on public land represent state "endorsement" of a particular faith.

Solicitor General Elena Kagan, defending the continued presence of the cross, said it was "a sensible action Congress took" to cure any First Amendment violation.

Chief Justice John Roberts appeared to support the government but did note the danger of Congress "singling out someone, a private property owner, who's using his property in a particular a religious way." When Kagan suggested that the government could put up a sign noting the cross was privately owned and operated, Roberts was unconvinced.

"But it hasn't done anything like that. It doesn't say for other property owners that have a ramshackle shack, that they want people to know this isn't the government's property," Roberts said. "Under your hypothetical, it would be only religious property that would have these special warning signs."

The ACLU is representing Frank Buono, the former Park Service employee who raised his objections in the original lawsuit. Attorney Peter Eliasberg told the court that "the government had favored one party to come on, contrary to the government's own regulations, and erect a permanent symbol while not allowing others."

Scalia scoffed at that suggestion. "I don't think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that that cross honors are the Christian war dead. I think that's an outrageous conclusion."

Several hypotheticals were offered by members of the bench, possibly indicating how broadly or narrowly their ruling will be applied.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wondered whether the donated Argonne Memorial Cross at Arlington National Cemetery should be dismantled. Eliasberg thought not, because a range of religious symbols appear on nearby individual gravestones.

What if a cross went up on the National Mall, next to the Lincoln Memorial, Stevens asked.

How about selling only a square foot around the Mojave Cross to private hands, Roberts asked. The legislation would have permitted one acre to be sold.

Some veterans groups have come out strongly in support of the cross.

"The real goal of the veterans group is to stop this really disgraceful conduct of having war memorials that have been up for 75 years be coming under attack because of political correctness or whatever mood of the day," said Kelly Shackleford, director of the Liberty Legal Institute, representing the VFW. "This was not put up by the government. It was put up by veterans. This is the symbol they chose."

Eliasberg took a more personal stand after the arguments. "My father is a Jewish war veteran, my grandfather was a Jewish war veteran in World War I, and to say that a cross represents the sacrifice of the 250,000 Jews who fought for this country in World War I is simply not true, and it's very rare that the government chooses the predominant religious symbol of one religion and puts it forth and says this honors us all."

The case is Salazar v. Buono (08-472). A ruling is expected early next year.

Cross comes before court

MOJAVE PRESERVE: Some argue that the sacred salute to soldiers is not constitutional.


By BEN GOAD
Riverside Press-Enterprise



A cross was erected atop Sunrise Rock in the Mojave National Preserve years ago to honor the war dead. (AP photo)

For three quarters of a century, a cross has stood high atop an outcropping of rocks in a far-flung and sun-blasted expanse of San Bernardino County's High Desert.

It was erected by a band of veterans as a tribute to the nation's war dead. It was protected for decades under a solemn promise made to the last living member of the group that built it. It was preserved by acts of Congress orchestrated by Inland Rep. Jerry Lewis.

But should a cross be allowed to stand above public land in the Mojave National Preserve?

That question, the root of a years-long fight over the constitutionality of the cross, may soon be answered. The U.S. Supreme Court will take up the case Wednesday. Their ruling could have far reaching implications on similar memorials around the country and could signal the newly refigured court's position on the constitutional provision prohibiting the federal government from endorsing any religion.

The justices could choose to limit their scope to the Mojave cross in particular. Previous court rulings found the cross is a violation of the Constitution and must come down.

The Supreme Court will address whether a land swap between the government and private landholders that transferred ownership of the land under the cross to a veterans group fixed that violation.

But the court could also revisit the question about whether religious symbols are permitted on public land, said Peter Scheer, executive director for the California-based First Amendment Coalition.

"The law in this area is anything but clear," Scheer said. "This could be huge."

A pledge kept

The white 7-foot cross is simple in its construction: four-inch diameter iron piping lashed together, welded and bolted to rock. Under court order, it stands shrouded within a plywood box. Pending the outcome of the case, either the cover will be removed, or the cross will come down.

The original memorial was constructed in 1934 by a small group of World War I veterans working as miners in the area. Among them was John "Riley" Bembry, a butcher by trade who settled after the war in a cabin in what now is the Mojave National Preserve.

Bembry made it his job to maintain and preserve the cross. The High Desert is home to the Fort Irwin military training center and the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms. Gen. George Patton trained his troops in the Mojave Desert and some say tracks from their tanks can still be found.

The cross became a meeting place for military men and their families who made the desert their home, said Lewis, R-Redlands, who became acquainted with the cross about 40 years ago when he was elected to the state Legislature and represented the area. Beyond Easter services, a longstanding tradition at the site, people would routinely gather there for meals served out of an old boxcar, he said.

"It was a way that veterans could come together and tell war stories," Lewis said.

It was over one such meal in 1972 that Bembry met Henry and Wanda Sandoz, who then lived in Mountain Pass. Henry, a miner, and Wanda, a school bus driver, grew close to Bembry, who became a grandfather figure to the couple's children.

Near death in the early 1980s, Bembry broached the subject of the cross in a conversation with Henry Sandoz.

"He knew that his time was short and it was important to him that it be looked after," Wanda Sandoz said. "And he knew Henry was a man of his word."

In the 25 years that followed, vandals more than once tore down various wooden incarnations of the cross. Each time, Sandoz, now 70, replaced them, finally erecting the current metal cross.

Neutrality needed

Frank Buono had just become the first assistant superintendent of the newly created Mojave National Preserve. It was 1995. Until the year before, the sprawling 1.6 million acre territory had been known as "unreserved federal land." ." Such had been the case since it was ceded by Mexico to the United States in 1848.

Buono was driving, taking stock of the reserve, when he spotted the cross looming above the formation known as Sunrise Rock. After some thought, he said, it didn't seem right to have a religious symbol on public land.

"I'm not offended by a cross, per se -- I'm a Christian and I have crosses in my house and in my church," said Buono, 62.

Rather, he said, he felt the cross' very existence on national land amounted to an improper endorsement of a single religion.

Soon after, Buono made a call to the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. The organization agreed and, together with Buono, filed a lawsuit seeking removal of the cross.

The cross' defenders say it honors all Americans killed on the battlefield. Peter Eliasberg, the attorney who on Wednesday will argue the case on behalf of the ACLU and Buono, described the government's endorsement of the cross as clear favoritism.

Eliasberg said many Jewish soldiers fought for the U.S. military in World War I.

"To pretend that you can say 'this represents all of you -- this honors all veterans,' when it (the cross) is the pre-eminent symbol of Christianity, is not what the government should be doing," Eliasberg said. "We should be honoring all veterans, not some veterans."

Led by Lewis, Congress in 2001 designated the cross a National Memorial. The designation has been awarded to fewer than 50 memorials around the country, including Mount Rushmore and the Lincoln Memorial.

That the cross remains the only national memorial to World War I further shows the government's endorsement of the symbol, Eliasberg said.

Legislative manuevers

Eliasberg will attempt to convince the court that the question of whether the cross should stand on public land is outside the parameters of the case now before the Supreme Court. That issue, he said, is already resolved.

In 2002, the United States District Court Central District of California ruled that Buono was right and that the cross must come down. A federal appeals court later backed that decision.

But while the appeal was pending in 2002, Congress passed a spending bill to which Lewis had added an amendment prohibiting the government from spending any money to remove the cross.

Lewis acted again in 2003, brokering a land exchange under which an acre of land on which the cross stands was transferred from the federal government to a Barstow post of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. In exchange, Sandoz, who now lives in Yucca Valley, agreed to give to the government five acres of land within the preserve.

While the case is known as Buono v. Salazar, for Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, it is Lewis who has led the government's defense.

"Congressman Lewis did everything in his power, to his credit or his discredit, to preserve this cross," Buono said.

In 2007, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the land swap didn't solve the problem, concluding that merely "carving out a tiny parcel of property in the midst of this vast preserve -- like a donut hole with the cross atop it -- will do nothing to minimize the impermissible governmental endorsement" of a religious symbol.

It is that question that the Supreme Court has agreed to consider, Eliasberg said.

Much at stake

But the government maintains that the 2007 ruling was improper because there was nothing wrong with the cross' presence in the first place, an argument that opens the door for a broader discussion of the laws relating to the separation of church and state.

Solicitor General Elena Kagan, who will argue the case on behalf of Salazar, also contends that Buono had no right to sue since he is not offended by the cross itself and has not suffered any injury.

If the court agrees, the ruling could curb all future lawsuits from citizens challenging government-sponsored nativity scenes, displays of the Ten Commandments outside courthouses, or any other religious imagery, Scheer said.

But if the cross is ordered down, the decision could lead to the removal of treasured memorials on historic battlefields or national cemeteries around the United States, according to a coalition of veterans groups rallying behind the Mojave cross.

"If a 7-foot cross in the middle of the desert can't be allowed to stand, what do you do with the 24-foot cross in the Arlington National Cemetery?" asked Kelly Shackelford, chief counsel for Liberty Legal Institute, a Texas-based firm that filed a brief in the case on behalf of the veterans groups.

Weighty as those questions may be, for Henry and Wanda Sandoz, the small plywood-encased cross in the middle of the desert is precisely what's at stake when arguments begin Wednesday morning.

"That stupid ugly box -- we hate that box," Wanda Sandoz said. "But in our mind's eye, we can still see what's inside."

ACLU runs amok in crusade against cross

Editorial
Sacramento Bee

On Oct. 7, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case – the culmination of a 10-year battle by the American Civil Liberties Union – to determine whether a 5-foot cross erected as a war memorial by veterans on a rock in California's Mojave Desert 75 years ago must be torn down.

Unless the Supreme Court overturns the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that the cross – now shamefully covered with a plywood box – be toppled, say goodbye to religious symbols or symbols of sacrifice in the form of a cross at veterans' memorials throughout the country, including the Sacramento Valley National Cemetery in Dixon.

Where is the outrage? How much longer does California have to put up with the costly years of litigation and flagrantly erroneous interpretations of the Constitution by the typically most overturned court in the nation – the 9th Circuit?

No one can possibly believe that a cross on a war memorial in the desert that happens to be on federal land means that the government has decreed Christianity the official religion of the United States – the ludicrous claim of the ACLU.

Behind the scenes of this blatant contempt for our constitutional rights to freedom of religion and speech is a sham of a case, Salazar v. Buono. The plaintiff, Frank Buono, a retired National Park Service employee at the Mojave National Preserve, between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, who moved from California to Oregon years ago, sued because he claimed that when he drove south to visit the preserve "two to four times a year," he was "deeply offended" by the cross on federal land. Never mind that there is another access point to the preserve where he could avoid seeing the memorial altogether. Laughably, U.S. District Court Judge Robert J. Timlin, ruled that inconvenience "sufficient to constitute injury."

In 2004, Congress voted to transfer the Mojave memorial to a private veterans' group, but the ACLU sued again – proving that the ACLU is not interested in a solution, only in tearing down the cross – and won in district court, a decision upheld by the 9th Circuit on a specious "separation of church and state" claim.

Two key legal issues are at stake.

First, does the hypersensitive Buono have "standing" to bring this suit? Can anyone who is "offended" at anything bring a lawsuit?

As the amicus brief from the American Legion states, previous Supreme Court decisions have made it clear that "standing requires some concrete actual or threatened personal injury." Standing cannot come from "perceived harm to mere psyche, feelings, or ideology." It cited a previous court decision that concluded that the "psychological damage" from viewing a religious portrait does not create a legal injury, and holding otherwise creates "a class of 'eggshell' plaintiffs of a delicacy never before known to the law." As the brief states, an adult "choosing to drive past a passive memorial containing a cross is not required, coerced, or even encouraged" to view the display.

The second question the court will review is, if the plaintiff does have standing to sue, did the 9th Circuit err in stopping Congress from transferring the land into private hands?

On this point, Justice Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain, joined by four other 9th Circuit justices who dissented from that court's decision, wrote that the court's ruling that Congress "cannot cure a government agency's Establishment Clause violation by ordering sale of the land upon which a religious symbol previously was situated" is a "novel rule" that "contravenes governing Supreme Court precedent," creates a "split" with other circuit court decisions, and "invites courts to encroach upon private citizens' rights under both the speech and religion clauses of the First Amendment."

Citing other cases in which imagery on veteran's memorials is being attacked, including the 19-year battle by the ACLU to tear down the Mount Soledad cross in San Diego, an amicus brief filed by the Veterans of Foreign Wars, other veterans groups and American Ex-Prisoners of War, states that few if any symbols in Western military heritage are "more appropriate to honor exemplary service and the giving of one's life to save another than a cross, a universal symbol of beneficent sacrifice."

Without appropriate action by the Supreme Court, it concludes, "the destruction of this and an untold numbers of like veterans memorials is sealed, and the rest fall deeper under the threatening shadow of a judiciary already proven hostile toward them."

Justices set hearing date for cross arguments

Video promoting WWI memorial has received 1 million hits



By Bob Unruh
© 2009 WorldNetDaily

The U.S. Supreme Court has announced it will hear arguments over the Mojave Desert Veterans Memorial Oct. 7, when the future of a seven-foot-tall cross consisting of two welded pipes will be considered.

The memorial, erected in 1934 by World War I veterans to honor all fallen soldiers, stands in the 1.6 million-acre Mojave National Preserve.

For decades, it served as a reminder to honor the fallen veterans of the United States until a former National Park Service worker who lives in Oregon sued for its removal, according to Liberty Legal Institute, which has been working on defense of the emblem.

A district court decided the memorial was unconstitutional in 2002 and issued an injunction requiring its removal in 2005. Since then, the memorial has been covered, first with a tarp and currently with a plywood box, awaiting a determination from the high court.

"The case is part of a larger trend of assaults on war memorials with religious imagery and all displays with religious symbolism on public property," Liberty Legal said.

The case, Salazar et al vs. Buono pits five veterans groups representing more than 4 million veterans, including the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Military Order of the Purple Heart against the American Civil Liberties Union.

Liberty Legal launched a public campaign called Donttearmedown.com to publicize the dispute, and a video about the situation has been viewed more than 1 million times.

"Our nation is only as secure as we remember those who have given their lives for the freedom that we now have," said Kelly Shackelford, chief counsel of Liberty Legal Institute and attorney for the veterans groups. "The issue of saving this veterans memorial is something nearly every American will be interested in."

The ACLU claims the memorial violates the First Amendment and has insisted the cross, which originally was unprotected federal property, be destroyed.

The American Center for Law and Justice, Liberty Counsel and the Thomas More Law Center have all filed briefs with the court in support of the monument, calling the ACLU's case ill-founded.

"Passive displays like the World War I Memorial, the Ten Commandments, Nativity scenes, or statements like the National Motto do not force anyone to participate in a religious exercise and, thus, do not establish religion," said Mathew D. Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, in a statement. "This case reveals the extreme lengths the ACLU will go to in order to erase religious monuments.

"For 75 years this cross in the Mojave Desert did not disturb anyone," Staver continued. "It stood as a memorial to the heroes of World War I. Removing this memorial would be an insult to our war veterans. Doing so under the guise of the First Amendment is an insult to the Framers of the Constitution."

According to a video on the Don't Tear Me Down campaign website, the veterans of World War I chose the rock because of the image of a doughboy that appears its creased face under certain light conditions.

In a commentary on WND, Rees Lloyd, a longtime California civil rights attorney, veteran and director of the Defense of Veterans Memorials Project, said the same issues also were involved in the long-running Mt. Soledad Memorial case.

Lloyd said judges who are not accountable to the people should not be able to overrule what people want. In the Mt. Soledad case, not only was the memorial approved by voters, Congress and the president agreed to protect it, only to be overruled by a single judge.

In the 17-year-long Mt. Soledad case, a judge eventually said the veterans memorial near San Diego is constitutional and can remain.

"When the cross is considered in the context of the larger memorial and especially the numerous other secular elements, the primary effect is patriotic and nationalistic, not religious," wrote U.S. District Judge Larry Alan Burns.

"The Court finds the memorial at Mt. Soledad, including its Latin cross, communicates the primarily non-religious messages of military service, death and sacrifice," he said.

Memorial cross finds 3 allies in Supreme Court fight

By Drew Zahn
WorldNetDaily







The Mojave Cross.


A World War I memorial cross built in the Mojave Desert by the Veterans of Foreign Wars to honor their fallen comrades has come under attack from the American Civil Liberties Union, which claims the display on federal land violates the First Amendment. The ACLU has further fought against transfer of the cross to into private hands, insisting instead that it be destroyed.

But as the fate of the cross rests now with the U.S. Supreme Court, three new allies have come to the side of the VFW and the memorial it established 75 years ago.

The American Center for Law and Justice, Liberty Counsel and the Thomas More Law Center have all filed briefs with the court this week in support of the monument, calling the ACLU's case ill-founded.

"Passive displays like the World War I Memorial, the Ten Commandments, Nativity scenes, or statements like the National Motto do not force anyone to participate in a religious exercise and, thus, do not establish religion," said Mathew D. Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, in a statement. "This case reveals the extreme lengths the ACLU will go to in order to erase religious monuments.

"For 75 years this cross in the Mojave Desert did not disturb anyone," Staver continued. "It stood as a memorial to the heroes of World War I. Removing this memorial would be an insult to our war veterans. Doing so under the guise of the First Amendment is an insult to the Framers of the Constitution."

As WND reported, the Mojave Desert Memorial Cross in the Mojave National Preserve was erected in 1934 by World War I veterans who wanted a place to remember their lost trench-mates from the big war.

But the ACLU, representing a man from Oregon who has alleged he might drive on a desert road in California and might be offended by the cross, has won lower court rulings that the cross must cease to exist.

After a federal district court held that display of the cross violated the Establishment Clause within the First Amendment, Congress directed the Department of the Interior to convey one acre of property that included the memorial to the VFW in exchange for a five-acre parcel of equal value. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit determined that the cross – and the land transfer – violated the Establishment Clause. Further, the cross has since been enclosed in plywood to prevent people from seeing it until the case is resolved.

The ACLJ, however, representing itself and 15 members of the House of Representatives – House Minority Leader John Boehner, Todd Akin, Michele Bachmann, Roy Blunt, Eric Cantor, Randy Forbes, Scott Garrett, Walter Jones, Jim Jordan, Doug Lamborn, Thaddeus McCotter, Jeff Miller, Mike Pence, Joseph Pitts, and Joe Wilson – believes the ACLU has overstretched its preferred definition of the "separation of church and state" yet again.

"The high court should reject this legal challenge and conclude that the government's action is not only appropriate but constitutional," said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the ACLJ, in a statement. "This case represents the most extreme example of a phenomenon that has plagued the federal courts for decades: Ideologically motivated citizens and public interest groups search out alleged Establishment Clause violations, almost always in the form of a passive religious symbol or display of some sort, and turn it into a federal case because they are offended. It's time for the high court to put an end to this disturbing practice."

Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel for the Thomas More Law Center, added in a statement, "Since the beginning of America, crosses have been used to memorialize our fallen war veterans and to give solace to their families and comrades. Ironically, the Ninth Circuit used the very Constitution these veterans defended with their lives to order the destruction of the memory of their heroic sacrifices."

Furthermore, as WND has reported, the Liberty Legal Institute has launched a website called Don't Tear Me Down that describes the attack on the cross in the desert, which now needs a favorable ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court or faces demolition.

Attorneys with the Liberty Legal Institute, which calls the case a "microcosm" of the trend of hostility towards veterans' memorials in the U.S, say the impact will reach many more memorials than just the one in California. They earlier set up a SaveOurMemorials.com website to warn about the situation.

Besides the Mojave Desert cross, which the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered destroyed, there also has been pending dispute over the Mt. Soledad memorial where an atheist sued for the removal of a cross image, a recent attempt by a religious group called Summum that could have forced the removal of donated Ten Commandments monuments in Utah, an attempt to take the Ten Commandments away from a historic location in Texas, and the order to remove a Ten Commandments reference in Kentucky.

In the Mojave Desert cross dispute, Liberty Legal filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, the Military Order of the Purple Heart and others seeking permission for the cross to remain because the land on which it stands originally had been owned by the VFW, which donated it to the government in the 1930s.

The organization responded to the unfavorable court ruling by donating five acres of land to the government and submitting a request that it be allowed to retrieve the monument. A court shot down the plan.

"It is bad enough to say that the veterans’ memorial is unconstitutional, but it is outrageous to say that the government cannot give the monument back to the people who spilled their blood and put it there in the first place,” said Kelly Shackelford, chief counsel of Liberty Legal Institute and attorney for the veterans groups.

According to the campaign, "If they win and succeed in tearing down this monument, what's next? Imagine what could happen at the Arlington National Cemetery. Will they put bags over all the crosses that mark the graves of our fallen heroes? … We believe America should remember and honor her veterans; and were taking our case to the U.S. Supreme Court to tell the ACLU that they can't tear down our freedom!"

According to a video on the Don't Tear Me Down campaign website, the veterans of World War I chose the rock because of the image of a doughboy that appears in the rock's creased face under certain light conditions.

Veteran Henry Sandoz and his wife, Wanda, have volunteered their time for years to keep up the site.

The campaign warns, "Across America, our precious war memorials are under attack by liberal groups such as the ACLU. These left-wing extremists want to REMOVE ALL public tributes to the brave men and women who gave their lives for freedom simply because these memorials use Scripture, crosses and other religious symbols."

The outcome of the court case "will determine if we can continue to honor and respect our veterans, or if we must wipe their memories from the public square. If not overturned, this case will impact every veterans' memorial and those they were built to remember," the organization said.

"This is a critical case that will once again put the spotlight on the constitutionality of religious displays and the proper role of the government and its actions," said Sekulow. "There's nothing wrong with the government transferring property containing symbols with religious significance to private parties. We're hopeful that the high court will conclude that the long-standing display of this cross does not create a constitutional crisis and that the action by the federal government represented a constitutionally-sound solution."

In a commentary on WND, Rees Lloyd, a longtime California civil rights attorney, veteran and director of the Defense of Veterans Memorials Project, said the same issues also were involved in the long-running Mt. Soledad Memorial case.

Lloyd said judges who are not accountable to the people should not be able to overrule what people want. In the Mt. Soledad case, not only was the memorial approved by voters, Congress and the president agreed to protect it, only to be overruled by a single judge.

In the 17-year-long Mt. Soledad case, a judge eventually said the veterans memorial near San Diego is constitutional and can remain.

"When the cross is considered in the context of the larger memorial and especially the numerous other secular elements, the primary effect is patriotic and nationalistic, not religious," wrote U.S. District Judge Larry Alan Burns.

"The Court finds the memorial at Mt. Soledad, including its Latin cross, communicates the primarily non-religious messages of military service, death and sacrifice," he said.

Federal judge says cross can remain on San Diego's Mt. Soledad

ACLU says opponents may appeal the decision. The symbol is part of a federally owned war memorial



The cross atop Mt. Soledad in San Diego has been the subject of controversy for years. Groups advocating a separation of church and state have sought the removal of the cross, saying it's unconstitutional to have a religious symbol on public land. A federal judge has ruled that the cross can remain. Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times

By Jia-Rui Chong
Los Angeles Times

A controversial cross on Mt. Soledad in San Diego can stay as part of a federally owned war memorial, a federal judge ruled.

"The court finds the memorial at Mt. Soledad, including its Latin cross, communicates the primarily nonreligious messages of military service, death and sacrifice," wrote U.S. District Judge Larry Alan Burns in his decision filed Tuesday. "As such, despite its location on public land, the memorial is constitutional."

An official with the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents several of the plaintiffs in the case, including the Jewish War Veterans of the United States of America, voiced disappointment in the decision. Lawyers for the group had contended that including the cross in a government park violated the principle of the separation of church and state.

"If you want to put a cross on your front lawn . . . we will be the first to defend you," said David Blair-Loy, legal director of the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties. "When the government is sponsoring and endorsing the preeminent symbol of one religion, that's when we have a problem."

He said his side is discussing further legal action. An appeal to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is "clearly on the table," Blair-Loy said.

William J. Kellogg, president of the Mount Soledad Memorial Assn. and grandson of one of the American Legion members who dedicated the cross in 1954, was pleased with the verdict. The association was not named in the lawsuit, but did not want the cross removed.

"The decision was based on the fact that it is clear it is a veterans memorial," Kellogg said. "That's what our association is all about." A cross has marked Mt. Soledad since about 1913, and the current concrete cross was dedicated in 1954 in memory of Korean War veterans, Kellogg said.

The lawsuits surrounding the cross began in the late 1980s when Philip Paulson, an atheist and Vietnam War veteran, sued the city of San Diego, which owned the Mt. Soledad property. In 2006, Congress passed a law taking the cross and the land on which it sits and giving it to the Department of Defense.

In his ruling Burns agreed that the cross is the preeminent symbol of Christianity, but said "it does not follow the cross has no other meaning or significance." He pointed to the exhibits on public beaches, such as Santa Monica's, where the group Veterans for Peace uses crosses in the sand to represent U.S. service members who died in Iraq.

The cross is also displayed "along with numerous purely secular symbols in an overall context that reinforces its secular message," the judge said.

Although walls with other religious symbols, such as the Star of David, have been added to the Mt. Soledad display, they are dwarfed by the large cross, Blair-Loy said. "It is a 43-foot cross on one of the highest points in San Diego," he said. "If the cross is not a religious symbol, I don't know what is."

Mojave Cross Saga

Basin pair fighting to keep shrine to veterans unshrouded

By JIMMY BIGGERSTAFF
Hi-Desert Star


A veterans’ memorial in the shape of a cross stands covered by a wooden box in the Mojave National Preserve. An appellate court ruling Thursday sustained an earlier decision by the U.S. District Court which turned down a plan promoted by Congressman Jerry Lewis proposing a land swap to preserve the cross, unshrouded.

YUCCA MESA — When Henry and Wanda Sandoz make a commitment, they take it seriously.

The Yucca Mesa couple has honored a dying man’s request since 1984, battling the elements, vandals, government bureaucracy and the American Civil Liberties Union.

At issue is a cross made of iron pipe painted white and stuck in a pile of granite boulders pretty much near the middle of nowhere in the Mojave National Preserve. The cross replaced an earlier wooden one erected at the remote spot in 1934 by the Death Valley Chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

A long-gone sign near the road once read “The Cross. Erected in memory of the dead of all wars.” The current cross is about 7 feet tall and maybe 5 feet across.

World War I veteran Riley Bembry lived nearby, although “nearby” is relative in those parts — his desert cabin was a few miles distant. Henry and Wanda Sandoz also were residents of the area, where he was a maintenance supervisor in the mines and she drove a school bus.

Whether Bembry adopted the Sandozes or they adopted him isn’t entirely clear, nor is it too relevant, as far as that goes. What matters is that Riley took on a grandfather role with Henry and Wanda; the relationship was symbiotic. He was a weekly fixture at dinner and attended family events like birthdays and holiday observances.

“Riley was always a gentleman,” Wanda recalled, a twinkle in her eye at the recollection of their benevolent friend. “He was soft-spoken, a handsome man, always very clean.”

As the old desert rat’s health turned south, he asked the couple to look after the memorial commemorating those who died in the war to end all wars, and those who died in wars after that.

For decades local cattlemen, miners and military veterans gathered at the location for dancing and socializing. A box car on the site, since removed, provided shelter and storage. A Sandoz granddaughter was dedicated to the church there.

The Sandozes attend Easter sunrise services at the site each year, which averages 30 to 50 people, sometimes as many as 80, depending on the weather. “Sometimes when it’s real cold we don’t have a whole lot,” Wanda said.

The cross was periodically vandalized. Sandoz put up sturdier monuments, beginning in the late ’70s. “They’d keep knockin’ it down, I’d keep putting it back up,” Henry said in a low, resolute voice, slowly shaking his head.

For the last several years the cross has been covered by a wooden box. A cross has been painted on the box; that painted cross has been painted over, and then the painted cross reappears on the box and is painted over again.

Why a cross? Why not an obelisk or some other, non-religious shape or symbol? “Because that’s what the vets chose,” Wanda replied, insistently. “That’s the whole point of it.”

For their part, Henry and Wanda are non-denominational.

“We’re just Christians,” Wanda explained. They’re good examples of the religion’s precepts of giving, caring and doing unto others.

Henry owns a five-acre parcel near the monument, “about eight miles as the crow flies,” that he has offered to swap for the one-acre rock pile upon which the cross is erected.

If the government would agree to the exchange, Sandoz would turn the site over to a veterans’ group like the Veterans of Foreign Wars. The offer is still on the table, he said, but so far no one has taken them up on the proposal.

If Bembry were to comment from the afterlife about the controversy swirling around the monument, Wanda speculated, “He would probably say he just can’t believe the country has come to this sad state of affairs, where they’d want to remove a memorial placed there to honor veterans.”

The fate of the veterans’ memorial will be decided by attorneys and politicians. Between attackers and defenders under government employ, the cost to taxpayers will surely ring up well into the thousands.

Henry and Wanda don’t much seem the types to get caught up in the political and religious fervor the cross has caused. They have been in contact with Congressman Jerry Lewis’ office. Wanda said the representative “is behind us 100 percent.”

It is melodramatic but accurate to describe Riley’s request to have Henry and Wanda look after the cross shortly before he died in 1984 as his dying wish.

Henry took his adopted grandfather’s final request to heart. He looks after the cross for Riley and for all veterans.

“I promised him,” Henry said plainly. “That’s important to me.”

Court forbids Mojave park's cross display

Andrew Edwards, Staff Writer
San Bernardino Sun

MOJAVE NATIONAL PRESERVE - A cross that stands above the desert as a memorial for Americans who died in World War I represents an unconstitutional federal endorsement of Christianity, according to a legal opinion handed down by the federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The cross stands atop Sunrise Rock on Cima Road inside the Mojave National Preserve. The preserve is public land, part of the National Park System. Upholding a 2005 court decision, Judge M. Margaret McKeown wrote that the cross would not be allowed even if the government traded Sunrise Rock for other land with a private party, thus removing the cross from public land.

The court published its opinion Thursday.

Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands, supported a land trade in a 2002 piece of legislation that would have transferred Sunrise Rock to a Barstow chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in exchange for a 5-acre patch of land.

Lewis could not be reached for comment Friday.

Mojave National Preserve superintendent Dennis Schramm said park officials have not yet determined the full impact of the court's opinion.

"I haven't heard anything from anyone yet," he said. "I'm still under a court order to keep it covered."

The cross could be viewed from Cima Road earlier this summer. The original monument, a wooden cross, was placed at Sunrise Rock in 1934, according to court documents. That cross has since been replaced by a metal edifice that was bolted into the rock in 1998.

Sunrise Rock has frequently been a site for Easter Sunday services.

Thursday's ruling stems from a 2001 lawsuit filed by Frank Buono, a former assistant superintendent at the Preserve who was represented by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Court papers from an earlier stage in the case noted that Buono was "deeply offended by the display of a Latin Cross on government-owned property."

Federal attorneys representing National Parks Service officials defended the cross's presence in the Preserve. Department of Justice spokesman Andrew Ames said that as of Friday, no decision had been made on whether to appeal the case.

Court upholds ruling against Redlands congressman's proposal to preserve cross

In 1934, prospector John "Riley" Bembry erected a wooden cross off Cima Road in the Mojave National Preserve to honor World War I veterans. In the mid-90s, a pipe cross was erected. 2001 / The Press-Enterprise


By RICHARD K. DE ATLEY
The Press-Enterprise

A U.S. appellate court on Thursday upheld a federal judge's 2005 ruling that a proposed land swap to preserve a cross in a remote area of the 1.6 million-acre Mojave National Preserve violates the separation of church and state.

"Carving out a tiny parcel of property in the midst of this vast Preserve -- like a donut (sic) hole with the cross atop it -- will do nothing to minimize the impermissible government endorsement," the opinion from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said.

The court sustained a ruling by Senior U.S. District Judge Robert J. Timlin, who had turned down a plan promoted by U.S. Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands.

Lewis's plan would have given the land where the cross sits to a nonprofit group in exchange for private land within the preserve.

The case was started by the American Civil Liberties Union in 2001 on behalf of a retired National Park Service employee, who objected to the cross being on federal land.

Under Timlin's orders, a tarp or plywood box has covered the cross for several years.

An estimated 40 to 50 people gather at the cross every Easter for sunrise services despite the box, organizers have said.

Attempts to preserve it have now been rejected twice in district court and twice by the 9th Circuit.

The cross, described as a 5- to 8-foot-tall structure made of 4-inch-diameter metal pipes painted white, sits on Sunrise Rock, northeast of the desert town of Baker and about 15 miles off the Cima Road exit of Interstate 15.

WWI Memorial

There has been a cross at the spot since 1934, when prospector John "Riley" Bembry put a wooden one there to honor World War I veterans. It was often vandalized.

Henry Sandoz, of Yucca Valley, erected the one made of pipes in the mid-1990s. President Clinton signed the bill authorizing the Mojave National Preserve in 1994, which includes the land where the cross sits.

Sandoz and his wife, Wanda, had agreed to give the government 20 acres of land they own within the preserve in exchange for the Sunrise Rock locale.

Lewis on Thursday called for the Justice Department to consider an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"It is a terrible shame that the 9th Circuit has determined that it is not possible to honor our veterans if the shape of the memorial happens to be a cross," said Lewis in a statement.

The congressman also said the decision could "have serious consequences for the thousands of monuments to veterans at our historic battlefields across the nation."

Limited Ruling

A law professor who observes the 9th Circuit's decisions called Lewis' suggestion "inflammatory," saying Thursday's ruling appeared to be narrowly decided.

"I don't think the court is making broad pronouncements beyond the facts of this scenario," said Carl Tobias of the University of Richmond. "It is very much limited and fact-specific to Sunrise Rock."

The Justice Department can seek to have the case reconsidered by a larger panel of 9th Circuit judges, or send the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Government attorneys did not return a phone call Thursday seeking comment.

"From a common-sense perspective, the government has to look at the fact that they are now batting zero-for-four," said ACLU attorney Peter Eliasberg. A war memorial with a cross eliminates honoring non-Christian veterans, he said.

"This is the only case I know of where the government has designated something a national memorial on one hand but is trying to sell it on the other hand," Eliasberg said. As a national memorial, the cross has the same status as Mount Rushmore, he noted.

Wanda Sandoz, speaking by phone from her Yucca Valley home, said she was disappointed with the latest ruling.

"If we have options, we will try to take them," she said. "I think every veteran in this country should be so upset and sad over this state of affairs."

She said her husband was too upset to come to the phone. "We care about it that much," she said.

A war on memory

By Michael Medved
Yahoo! News – USA

What shocking visual image inspires so much fear, disgust and outrage that even in this era of unfettered free expression, federal courts feel compelled to take drastic steps to cover it up?

Judges will rarely use their power to hide public sculptures depicting sadistic brutality, or to obscure billboards peddling sex and nudity, but in the California desert they've ordered the concealment of a simple white cross that has honored the nation's war dead for more than 70 years.

In 1934, the Veterans of Foreign Wars erected a monument on a barren hilltop known as "Sunrise Rock" in the Mojave National Preserve to commemorate "the dead of all wars." More than a half-century later, the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California challenged the memorial, claiming that it violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because the cross (recognized by the government as a war memorial) stood on public land. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the dismantling of the monument, but Congress took action in 2004 to authorize the transfer of the ground surrounding the cross to private parties.

A federal district judge invalidated that transaction, even as officials responsible for the desert refuge took steps to hide the cross while the legal wrangling continued. Government agents covered the offending crossbeam with boards, making it look like a crude screen, or a shallow box, perched incongruously on a stick in the middle of the California desert.

An easy, favorite target

The absurd status of this ongoing struggle shouldn't obscure its serious and alarming undercurrents - including a common attitude among militant "separationists" that treats Christian symbols with more hostility and less tolerance than those of any other religious tradition.

Imagine that the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum decided for some reason to erect a large Star of David on top of its stark building in Washington. Would the ACLU object to the raising of this religious (and, yes, national) symbol on a structure that has been built, after all, on federal land? In the unlikely event that anyone stood up to oppose such symbolism, reasonable people would respond that the Jewish star represented an appropriate commemoration to the millions of predominantly Jewish victims honored by the museum.

By that logic, a cross (whether in the Mojave Desert or in another controversial war memorial on the top of Mount Soledad near San Diego) represents a similarly suitable tribute to fallen warriors who have died for the United States - because the overwhelming majority of those soldiers considered themselves Christians. To this day, more than 85% of Americans describe themselves as Christians, and many recent studies (including the excellent Imperial Grunts by Robert D. Kaplan) report that devout Christian believers are, if anything, overrepresented in our volunteer Army.

The government recently authorized a Wiccan symbol (a five-pointed star, or pentacle) to appear on the military cemetery gravestone of a GI who died in Afghanistan - despite objections by some Christian activists that Wicca (a proudly pagan tradition that incorporates elements of druidical nature worship) carries unwholesome associations with witchcraft and Satanism. The armed forces rightly gave the family of the fallen soldier the right to choose its own symbolism in tribute to him, even if that symbol appeared on public property. After all, the military already allows grave site recognition of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Mormonism and even atheism (represented by a stylized diagram of an atom).

In the same sense that no one should feel offended by honoring the war dead with symbols of their faiths, so, too, even the most radical secularists ought to accept the war memorial cross as the right way to honor the overwhelmingly Christian identification of those who have died defending our country.

The intolerant reaction to crosses on various hillsides and mountaintops has nothing to do with a fear that non-Christians (like me) might feel unconstitutionally compelled to worship the emblem of the nation's majority religion. In truth, we remain blessedly free to view that symbol with indifference, respect, curiosity, devotion, bemusement or even contempt - in the same way that our Christian neighbors can look on displays of Hanukkah menorahs that have begun turning up on public property every December.

A display of the cross (especially a cross that has been there for decades, such as the one in the desert) doesn't amount to "establishment of religion" or the imposition of theocracy, but it does function as a reminder of the fervent Christianity that has played such a potent, even predominant, role in shaping and sustaining this country. My Jewish kids aren't intimidated or threatened by such reminders, but they would be damaged by enforced ignorance of the Christian ideals and idealists behind crucial historical movements - from the pilgrims to the civil rights marchers, from the establishment of our most prestigious universities (nearly all of which began as Christian seminaries) to the battles to free slaves and resist international communism.

Reflecting a Christian past

Of course non-Christians - including atheists, agnostics and members of minority faiths - have also played heroic roles in every era of the American past. But with the current freewheeling diversity in our religious marketplace of ideas - where missionaries for Scientology jostle the enthusiastic advocates of the Kabbalah Center - we're in little danger of viewing our culture's present or future in monochromatic or intolerant terms.

We do face formidable efforts, however, to erase and distort the nation's Christian past. In this sense, it's almost appropriate that secular activists focus on the crosses used in various war memorials: the very designation "memorial" derives from the word "memory," and the effort to obliterate these monuments in various locations amounts to more than a program to redecorate the landscape. The campaign against religious symbols represents a war on memory itself - and an intolerant effort to eradicate all prominent reminders of the faith-based heritage of this civilization.

Nationally syndicated radio talk host Michael Medved is the author of Right Turns. He is also a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.

9th Circuit to decide 'Mojave Desert Cross' fate

OneNewsNow.com
Ed Thomas

The National Legal Foundation and its attorneys are awaiting a decision from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals following Monday's hearing on a case challenging the right of a World War I memorial cross to remain on public land in the middle of the Mojave Desert.

In the case of Buono v. Kempthorne, the National Legal Foundation (NLF) is fighting the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in an effort to save the Mojave Desert Cross. The large, white memorial cross has been located on Sunrise Rock in the Mojave National Preserve near the California-Nevada border since 1934, when it was given and erected by the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Attorney Joe Infranco is with Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), which argued an amicus brief for NLF at Monday's hearing. He says one of the last acts of Bill Clinton's presidency was his executive order authorizing the establishment of the land the cross stood on as a federal preserve.

"The ink was barely dry, and a local ACLU affiliate was filing a lawsuit," Infranco notes. The lawsuit challenging the monument's constitutionality alleged that its placement on federal land in the Mojave Desert violated the First Amendment's guarantee of separation of church and state and that the memorial cross should therefore be removed.

Supporters of the Mojave Desert Cross hoped to reach a settlement of the suit with the Department of Defense's transfer of the memorial land to private ownership in 2004. However, the ACLU claimed before the 9th Circuit that the property transfer was invalid -- a point ADF helped dispute in this week's appeals court hearing.

Such transfers already have legal precedent in several federal court cases, the ADF attorney notes. He says a number of federal appellate courts have already held that government property may be transferred to private ownership to prevent challenges based on the Establishment Clause, which, he notes "is that part of the First Amendment that is cited as the basis for the so-called separation of church and state." Although the jurisdictional circumstances were different, ADF recently helped defend a similar land transfer to save San Diego's Mount Soledad Cross in California.

Based on the precedents cited in the amicus brief, Infranco says ADF and the other cross supporters in Buono v. Kempthorne are hoping their argument that the transfer of the WWI memorial cross to private ownership was legal will prevail.

Surreal Mojave Cross video