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.

Mojave Cross to return to desert home

National Park rangers to send back cross

Golden Gate National Recreation Area ranger Nijaune Winston stands by the Mojave Cross. The National Park district intends to return the cross to its original locale in the Mojave National Preserve. (Photo courtesy of Golden Gate National Recreation Area)

by Mark Noack
Half Moon Bay Review

National Park Service officials this week took custody of the Mojave Cross with plans to return it to its desert home, one week after the handmade monument was found mysteriously on the side of Skyline Boulevard.

Once found, the cross, a 6-foot steel-pipe structure, was delivered to the Half Moon Bay Sheriff’s substation. Then it was transported to an undisclosed location in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. GGNRA officials say the cross is being treated as evidence until it is returned to the Mojave National Preserve. Those arrangements are still being made.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, Yucca Valley resident Henry Sandoz, the caretaker of the cross, installed a replacement at the same location as part of a Veterans Day ceremony. The event also marked a successful land trade as a workaround to the delicate church-state issues at play.

Originally erected in 1934 to honor World War I veterans, the Mojave Cross became the target of lawsuits, appeals and court rulings after its surrounding property became part of the National Park system. The cross became a legal pawn in a larger controversy. Civil-rights groups viewed its as a blatant religious display on public land while veterans’ associations defended it as a memorial.

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a 2010 ruling on the matter, but just days afterward the cross was stolen. It remained missing for two years until last week, when a television news crew discovered it lying on the side Highway 35. The cross was wrapped up and had a message asking whoever found it to return it. Sandoz and National Park officials later authenticated it was the same cross stolen in 2010.

Last week, the National Park Service announced it was transferring a small piece of the Mojave National Preserve to the California Veterans of Foreign Wars as a way to resolve the central conflict of the lawsuits.

Cross stands again

The new Mojave Cross after it was installed on Sunday, November 11, Veterans Day. (DAVID OLSON/STAFF PHOTO)

BY DAVID OLSON
Press-Enterprise

MOJAVE NATIONAL PRESERVE -- After more than a decade of First Amendment court battles, a cross stands again in the Mojave National Preserve, for the first time with the legal blessing of the U.S. Supreme Court.

More than 100 people Sunday, November 11, watched as the seven-foot-tall iron cross was hoisted onto and then bolted into Sunrise Rock, which is 12 miles off Interstate 15 about halfway between Barstow and Las Vegas. Then, the commander of the California Veterans of Foreign Wars, Earl Fulk, formally rededicated it.

The Veterans Day ceremony occurred 78 years after World War I veterans erected the cross in honor of their fallen comrades, and 11 years after a lawsuit backed by the American Civil Liberties Union sought to remove it.

The ACLU, representing a former National Park service employee, argued that permitting a cross on public land was an unconstitutional government endorsement of Christianity.

After two federal courts agreed with the ACLU, the 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 VFW now owns the acre under and around the cross. The land exchange was formally completed Nov. 2.

The ceremony occurred as Riverside discussed a similar land exchange after threats of a lawsuit over the Mt. Rubidoux cross. A military atheist group is objecting to a proposed veterans memorial in Lake Elsinore that includes a cross.

The iron cross that had stood on the Mojave site for years was stolen two months after the Supreme Court decision. It was found Nov. 5, south of San Francisco. A plywood box encased it during years of court appeals.

The cross installed Sunday was a replacement created by one of the cross's caretakers, Henry Sandoz, 73, of Yucca Valley. Sandoz said concrete will be poured inside the iron pipes on another day, to make it harder to steal.

For 30 years Sandoz and his wife Wanda looked after several crosses on the site, those previous either vandalized or stolen.

Wanda Sandoz, 68, said she was overjoyed when she saw the cross finally go up, at last with its legality undisputed.

“I can't even describe it,” she said of her feelings. “It was just wonderful to see it go up and know it's going to be able to stay. That's the best thing.”

The Sandozes traded five acres of their land in exchange for the acre ceded to the VFW.

Sunrise Rock sits amid a sea of Joshua trees just off Cima Road.

Rees Lloyd, a Banning resident representing the American Legion at the ceremony, said the lawsuit against the cross was an attack on religious freedom and involved a memorial that few saw.

“Why would anyone be offended?” said Lloyd, a former Legion district commander who was wearing a white button with a red line through “ACLU.” “You can't see it from the freeway. You have to drive to it to be offended.”

Chuck Wilcox, 47, Henry Sandoz's son-in-law and a Yucca Valley resident, said the years of litigation “was a bigger deal than it should have been.”

“It just seemed ridiculous to me,” said Wilcox, who helped carry the blanket-wrapped cross up Sunrise Rock and then helped raise it. “The whole time I've lived out here, it was just here, part of the landscape.”

The land swap was first negotiated by U.S. Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands. Congress approved it.

But a federal appellate court ruled against it, saying that transferring one acre of land to the VFW in the middle of the vast expanse of federal park land “will do nothing to minimize the impermissible governmental endorsement” of a religious symbol.

A divided Supreme Court in 2010 overturned that decision.

“The goal of avoiding governmental endorsement (of religion) does not require eradication of all religious symbols in the public realm,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote.

During the ceremony, Hiram Sasser, director of litigation for the Texas-based Liberty Institute, which focuses on religious-freedom cases and was involved in the Mojave cross case, talked of the indignities that crosses on the site have been through.

“This memorial has been bagged, it's been torn down and it's been stolen,” he said. “And now it's back, it's up and you're standing on VFW property,” Sasser said to loud cheers and clapping. “It's fantastic.”

A cable surrounds the newly private land, with signs stating that it is VFW-owned property open to the public.

The Sandozes became caretakers in 1983, when Riley Bembry, one of the WWI veterans who erected the cross in 1934, was near death and asked the couple to take care of the cross. Veterans Day was established to honor WWI veterans and now honors all who served in the military.

On a table topped with red, white and blue cupcakes to celebrate the installation of the cross sat a wood-framed black-and-white photo of Bembry. The photo usually is in the Sandozes' living room, near an oak dining room table that Reilly gave to the couple.

“My great friend Riley, he would really be smiling down on us now,” said Henry Sandoz.

“He probably is,” he said with a laugh.

Stolen Mojave cross mysteriously reappears in California

An unsigned note was found taped to the Mojave Memorial Cross, which was found Monday. A new cross is due to be raised atop Sunrise Rock at Mojave National Preserve at 11 a.m. Sunday, followed at 1 p.m. by a re-dedication ceremony. (The Associated Press)

By Henry Brean
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

A stolen cross that sparked controversy and a Supreme Court case may soon be headed back to its Mojave Desert home after it was left by the side of a road south of San Francisco.

The San Mateo County Sheriff's Office recovered the white metal cross late Monday morning near the town of Half Moon Bay, Calif., more than 500 miles from where it stood for decades before being stolen in 2010.

Based on a tip from a San Francisco television station, deputies found the cross strapped upright to a fence post with an unsigned note taped to it that read: "This cross is an important historical artifact. It is in fact the Mojave cross, taken on the evening of May 9, 2010 from Sunrise Rock in the Mojave Desert. I would be very grateful if you would be so kind as to notify the appropriate authorities of its presence here."

Authorities don't yet know who returned the cross or who stole it in the first place.

Its mysterious reappearance comes just days before a replica was due to be placed atop Sunrise Rock as part of a Veterans Day service.

Long before igniting a constitutional controversy over religious symbols on federal land, the welded steel symbol was mounted to the rock 75 miles southwest of Las Vegas by a group of World War I vets as a memorial to fallen soldiers.

For decades, it served as a site for Easter Sunday services and the occasional veterans event. A handful of volunteers maintained - and occasionally replaced - the cross, which was damaged from time to time by vandals and the desert wind.

The Mojave Memorial Cross, as it came to be known, still stood in 1994 when the 1.6 million acres surrounding it was designated as a national preserve. Three years later, a retired park service employee lodged a complaint about it because he considered it a government endorsement of Christianity.

A pair of lawsuits ensued, and the cross was cast into darkness, spending several years covered by boards like a roadside sign with no writing on it.

In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in with a 5-4 decision that cleared the symbol to remain on display while a lower court reconsidered the case.

The cross was stolen two weeks later.

At least twice since then, replicas were placed at the site, only to be taken down by National Park Service employees acting under a court order.

The long legal fight was finally resolved last week, when the park service transferred ownership of Sunrise Rock and the acre surrounding it to the California office of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, a private organization free to erect and maintain a cross there.

In exchange, the park service got five acres of formerly private land inside the Mojave National Preserve.

"We have a solution that honors those who died for their country and honors national parks," said preserve superintendent Stephanie R. Dubois in a statement.

A new cross is due to be raised at the site at 11 a.m. Sunday, followed at 1 p.m. by a rededication ceremony featuring longtime caretakers Henry and Wanda Sandoz and others.

It is unclear whether the original cross will make it back to the site alongside Cima Road, about 12 miles south of Interstate 15, in time for Sunday's event. Authorities in San Mateo County said the recovered cross would be turned over to park service officials in San Francisco.

No matter which cross is raised this weekend, James Rowoldt, CEO of the VFW in California, is just glad the underlying dispute has finally been settled.

"I'm just happy for the Sandozes. I'm happy it's over for them," Rowoldt said earlier Monday, before learning about the cross found near Half Moon Bay. "It's just a happy day for everyone."

Mojave Cross to be re-erected on Veterans Day

Henry Sandoz and his wife, Wanda, visit the monument to fallen service members in Mojave National Preserve in October 2008, before the U.S. Supreme Court decided to hear the case. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Beatriz E. Valenzuela
San Bernardino Sun

It's been a long legal battle that lasted more than a decade, but now, Henry and Wanda Sandoz of Yucca Valley will finally be able to keep a promise they made to a dying friend and veteran nearly 30 years ago.

"We really loved him," said Wanda in a phone interview. "It was really important for us to keep that promise to him. And to show we love our veterans and our country."

On Veterans Day, the Sandozes will be able to legally re-erect a simple 7-foot cross on Sunrise Rock east of Baker in the Mojave National Preserve.

The Sandozes met and became good friends with Riley Bembry, one of the World War I veterans who first placed the cross on Sunrise Rock in 1934 as a way to honor the veterans of that war.

When Bembry became ill and frail, he asked Henry to watch over the cross. Henry agreed.

Bembry died a short time later in 1984.

"It means very much to me, yes, and also to our veterans and our Lord and Savior," said Henry, 73.

The cross had become the focus of a legal case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union in 2000. The ACLU sued the federal government, asking that the cross be removed because the Christian symbol on federal land violated the First Amendment, prohibiting the government from endorsing any religion.

Soon the Liberty Institute in Plano, Tex., took up the cause for the Sandozes.

"If they hadn't come in on this we probably wouldn't have won," Wanda.

In 2002, the U.S. District Court Central District of California ruled in the ACLU's favor and the cross was encased in wood until an agreement could be reached.
In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned previous the ruling calling for the cross to be removed and sent the case back down to the U.S. District Court level.

A little more than a week after the ruling, the cross vanished. A replacement cross reappeared shortly after, but it was removed.

"We had people from all over the country offering us big granite crosses as replacements," Wanda said. "It was tempting, but we thought the cross should stay as the veterans wanted."

"Just a simple 7-foot white cross made of pipe," said Henry.

Earlier this year, a land swap was approved in which the Sandozes gave five acres of land to the Mojave Preserve in exchange for the one acre where the cross once sat. The land swap, putting the cross on private property, was finalized Friday.

"We're both just so happy that this is finally behind us," Wanda said. "It's been a 13-year battle. Henry had a big heart attack six or seven years ago and it's been a real concern that he was going to die before he saw this resolved."

For Henry, it's not only about keeping a promise to a friend, but honoring those who have served.

"Not having served, this is a way for me to give something back to them," he said.

The cross will be re-erected at 11 a.m. Nov. 11. A ceremony will follow at 1 p.m. The event is open to the public. Sunrise Rock is located on Cima Road off the 15 Freeway near Baker.

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.

Cross shows up mysteriously, but briefly, on Mojave rock

By Henry Brean
Las Vegas Review-Journal


Mojave National Preserve - A white cross rose again this week over Sunrise Rock in California's Mojave National Preserve, briefly resurrecting a constitutional controversy over religious symbols on federal land.

It's unclear who put up the new cross, made of plastic pipe, or when, but the National Park Service removed it Tuesday from the rock 75 miles southwest of Las Vegas.

Linda Slater, spokeswoman for the preserve, said park personnel had no choice but to take it down.

"We're under a court order prohibiting us from displaying a cross at Sunrise Rock," she said.

The legal fight dates back a decade now. The original cross goes back considerably further than that -- clear back to 1934, when a group of World War I veterans mounted a welded steel symbol atop Sunrise Rock as a memorial to fallen soldiers.

For decades, it served as a site for Easter Sunday services and the occasional veterans event. A handful of volunteers maintained -- and occasionally replaced -- the cross, which was damaged from time to time by vandals and the desert wind.

The Mojave Memorial Cross, as it came to be known, was still there in 1994 when the federal government declared the 1.6 million acres surrounding it a national preserve.

And the cross was still there in 1997 when a retired park service employee lodged a complaint about it because he considered it a government endorsement of Christianity.

A pair of lawsuits ensued, and the cross was cast into darkness, spending several years covered by boards like a roadside sign with no writing on it.

One of the lawsuits made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where in a 5-4 decision last year the justices ruled the symbol could stay while a lower court reconsidered the case.

Two weeks later, the original cross was stolen by still-unidentified vandals.

It was replaced days later by a replica cross, but the service quickly removed that one because the Supreme Court ruling applied only to the original disputed cross.

Wyn Hornbuckle, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, said the PVC pipe cross that showed up this week on Sunrise Rock was taken down for the same reason.

"The National Park Service removed the newly erected cross yesterday to comply with the court's existing injunction," he said in a statement.

Not everyone is satisfied with that answer.

Southern California resident William McDonald visits Mojave National Preserve several times a year and writes a blog about the desert under the name Morongo Bill.

He noticed the return of the cross on Monday and was watching from a distance as it was removed on Tuesday.

As far as he is concerned, this isn't about the separation of church and state; it's about the desecration of a war memorial that has been around for more than three quarters of a century.

"I'm a veteran, and I believe we don't know where we're going if we don't know where we've been," he said. "I feel so strongly about this (that) I think they should do an Occupy Sunrise Rock-type thing."

Hornbuckle said settlement talks are under way that could finally bring the legal fight over the cross to an end.

On Tuesday, the same day the latest replica cross was removed, a federal judge granted the parties involved in both lawsuits until Feb. 15 to hammer out a deal.

The most likely option is for the federal government to transfer ownership of Sunrise Rock to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in exchange for private land elsewhere in or around the preserve. Once the rock is in private hands, there would be nothing to prevent the placement of a memorial cross there.

As it now stands, erecting a cross or other religious symbol on Sunrise Rock is "technically illegal," Slater said.

Asked what would happen to the latest cross removed by the service, she said: "We'll put it in the evidence locker with the other one. What else would we do with it?"

Authorities Say Mojave Desert Replacement Memorial Cross Must Come Down

Joe Abrams
FOXNews.com
Associated Press


Apple Valley resident Mark Ware was the first person to see the new cross at Sunrise Rock. (Mark Ware and HighDesert.com)


Authorities say a Mojave Desert war memorial cross that replaced one that was stolen is illegal and must come down.

Linda Slater, a spokeswoman with the Mojave National Preserve, says a maintenance worker spotted the 7½-foot replica cross made of metal pipes on Thursday in a federal park.

The original cross was stolen more than a week ago. It had been the subject of a lawsuit arguing that the Christian symbol didn't belong on public land.

The U.S. Supreme Court temporarily allowed the old cross to stand, but Slater says the new cross isn't covered by the ruling and will be taken down.

The site's caretakers constructed a replacement cross on Saturday. Wanda Sandoz, who has watched over the site with her husband Henry since 1984, said the one put in place Wednesday night is not the one welded by her husband.

Sandoz said the cross that went up overnight is white, but their replica has not been painted yet -- indicating that the replacement could be the original stolen cross or someone else's replica.

"I'm curious as to how they got it up there," Sandoz said, explaining that erecting the cement-filled pipes was a rigorous and difficult process — and would be much harder by the light of a quarter moon.

"It's not like you can dig a hole and put a cross in there. It's solid rock up there," she said.

Thieves used bolt cutters to rip through the inch-thick bolts that had kept the cross in place since 1984. That memorial replaced a wooden cross that was put up in the Mojave Desert in 1934 by veterans of World War I to honor troops who died in battle.

Sandoz said her husband was helped by about five or six ranchers when he put up the metal cross in 1984. "One man couldn't have taken it down, and one man couldn't put it back up," she said.

The Park Service told FoxNews.com on Wednesday that it opposed replacing the stolen cross as long as litigation continues.

A $125,000 reward has been offered for information leading to the arrest of the thieves who took the memorial.

Mojave Cross torn down by vandals

Bill McDonald shows where the Mojave Cross once stood. The cross was torn down by vandals sometime Sunday night. (William Wilson Lewis III/The Press-Enterprise)

Ben Goad
Press-Enterprise

The 76-year-old Mojave Cross war memorial in San Bernardino County's High Desert has been torn down by vandals, just days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the religious symbol could remain -- at least temporarily -- on public land.

Sometime Sunday night, the cross was taken down from its perch atop Sunrise Rock in the Mojave National Preserve, according to Liberty Institute, a group that represented veterans groups and caretakers of the cross in the recent Supreme Court Case.

"This is an outrage, akin to desecrating people's graves," said institute president Kelly Shackelford. "It's a disgraceful attack on the selfless sacrifice of our veterans. We will not rest until this memorial is re-installed."

The cross was erected in the 1934 by a veterans group as a tribute to their fallen brethren in World War I. It has been the subject of a decade long court battle between those who want it to remain and those who believe it violates the separation of church and state.

In a split decision late last month, the Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling that the cross must be removed. The High Court remanded the case back to federal district court in Southern California. The ruling was a major victory for proponents of the cross, but the American Civil Liberties Union vowed to renew its opposition to the cross.

Liberty Institute is offering an undisclosed reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the removal of VFW property.

War Memorial Torn Down by Vandals!

Reward Offered for Information Leading to Arrest and Conviction of Responsible Parties

PRNewswire

PLANO, TX -- The Mojave Desert War Memorial, which was saved temporarily by a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling, was torn down by vandals sometime Sunday night. Liberty Institute, which represents longtime memorial caretakers Henry and Wanda Sandoz, the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States (VFW), The American Legion, Military Order of the Purple Heart, and the American Ex-Prisoners of War, is offering a reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the removal of VFW property.

"This is an outrage, akin to desecrating people's graves," said Kelly Shackelford, president/CEO of Liberty Institute. "It's a disgraceful attack on the selfless sacrifice of our veterans. We will not rest until this memorial is re-installed."

The ACLU and its plaintiff originally won a decision to tear down the memorial cross, but that was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court on April 28. The ACLU has stated that, as the case returns to the district court, it still plans to argue for the memorial to be torn down.

"This was a legal fight that a vandal just made personal to 50 million veterans, military personnel and their families," said VFW National Commander Thomas J. Tradewell, Sr. "To think anyone can rationalize the desecration of a war memorial is sickening, and for them to believe they won't be apprehended is very naive.

"The memorial will be rebuilt and the vandals will be caught and prosecuted in federal court, since the crime occurred on government property," said Tradewell, a combat-wounded Vietnam veteran from Sussex, Wis. "We hope this horrible act will highlight the importance of resolving this case quickly so that the memorial and land can be transferred to the VFW so that the service and sacrifice of all American war dead will be properly recognized and honored, as originally intended by a group of World War I VFW members 76 years ago."

"Reports that the Mojave Cross was illegally removed overnight are very disturbing," said The American Legion National Commander Clarence E. Hill. "The American Legion expects whoever is responsible for this vile act to be brought to justice. While the memorial has been attacked, the fight will continue to ensure that veterans memorials will remain sacrosanct."

"This was never about one cross," said Hill. "It is about the right to honor our nation's veterans in a manner in which the overwhelming majority supports. The American Legion strongly believes the public has a right to protect its memorials."

Liberty Institute works to uphold Constitutional and First Amendment religious and speech freedoms in the courts. Liberty Institute represented all major veterans groups as amici in the Supreme Court case of Salazar v. Buono involving this 76-year-old war memorial.

For more information or to leave a tip.

The Mojave cross ruling: a blow to the 1st Amendment

The Supreme Court sends the message the government can treat a Christian symbol as a national emblem and display it on public property.

OPINION
Los Angeles Times

The Supreme Court on Wednesday sent a simple — and disturbing — message in a complicated ruling about an 8-foot cross in California's Mojave National Preserve. The message is that the government can treat the preeminent Christian symbol as a national emblem and display it on public property.

The decision didn't explicitly approve the display of the cross, the successor to one erected in 1934 by a veterans group to honor fallen World War I soldiers. Nor did it render a final judgment on whether Congress acted constitutionally in approving a deal in which the Interior Department would swap the public land on which the cross stands for a privately owned five-acre parcel elsewhere, on the condition that the new owners maintain it as a war memorial. The latter question will be reexamined by the lower court that issued an order against the transfer.

But these technicalities can't obscure the fact that a majority of the justices seem willing to accept Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's assertion in the court's main opinion that "a Latin cross is not merely a reaffirmation of Christian beliefs. It is a symbol often used to honor and respect those whose heroic acts, noble contributions and patient striving help secure an honored place in history for this nation and its people." At oral arguments in the case, Justice Antonin Scalia made the same point, prompting this devastating response from the lawyer for the former National Park Service employee who challenged the display: "I have been in Jewish cemeteries. There is never a cross on a tombstone for a Jew." Yet more than 3,500 Jewish American soldiers died in World War I.

Conceivably the Veterans of Foreign Wars, which would be responsible for the memorial after the land swap, could obtain congressional approval to add a Star of David or an Islamic crescent to the cross or, better yet, to erect a memorial containing no religious symbols. But they needn't consider such alternatives given Kennedy's conclusion that the cross is a generic tribute to war dead rather than a symbol that sends what dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens called a "starkly sectarian message."

It's distressing that the court seems inclined to uphold the government-sanctioned display of the cross in a national preserve (even if it actually stands on a tiny parcel of private land). More ominously, Wednesday's decision suggests that the court is moving toward what Kennedy in his opinion called a "policy of accommodation" of religious displays — even if the only display is the symbol of a single religion. The 1st Amendment deserves better.

Mojave Cross can stay on display in California

Supreme Court defends public religious symbol

By Valerie Richardson
Washington Times

An 8-foot cross honoring fallen soldiers in the remote Mojave National Preserve in California can stay where it is, because the Supreme Court said Wednesday that the Constitution nowhere requires the "eradication of all religious symbols in the public realm."

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing the lead opinion in a 5-4 decision in which several justices wrote separate concurrences and dissents, compared the Mojave Cross to a hypothetical highway memorial marking the death of a state trooper to make the point that such displays "need not be taken as a statement of governmental support for sectarian beliefs."

"The Constitution does not oblige government to avoid any public acknowledgment of religion's role in society," Justice Kennedy said in his opinion. "Rather, it leaves room to accommodate divergent values within a constitutionally permissible framework."

Leading the dissenters was Justice John Paul Stevens, who called the war memorial "unprecedented" in its starkly religious tone.

"Congressional action, taken after due deliberation, that honors our fallen soldiers merits our highest respect," said Justice Stevens, who recently announced his plan to retire. "As far as I can tell, however, it is unprecedented in the nation's history to designate a bare, unadorned cross as the national war memorial for a particular group of veterans."

The justices didn't rule technically on the constitutional issue of whether the cross constitutes an establishment of religion. However, they declined to rule that the cross was a First Amendment violation, as asked, and the majority justices' language indicate a more benign view of religion expression on public lands.

Instead, the justices sent the case, Salazar v. Buono, back to a lower federal court and told the judge to look again at how the constitutional issues are affected by a congressional plan to transfer the federal land beneath the 8-foot cross to a veterans group. Lower federal courts had said the transfer was insufficient, a finding the justices implicitly rebuked.

Voting with Justice Kennedy in favor of keeping the cross was the court's conservative bloc, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Opposed were Justices Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Steven G. Breyer.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of Frank Buono, a former assistant superintendent at Mojave National Preserve, who said that the memorial offended him. The original cross was erected atop an outcropping known as Sunrise Rock in 1934 by World War I veterans.

A federal court ruled in Mr. Buono's favor and ordered the removal of the cross, but Rep. Jerry Lewis, California Republican, inserted language into a defense appropriations bill declaring the cross site a national memorial.

Barstow Veterans of Foreign Wars, thus placing the cross on private land.

The ACLU argued that the land transfer was a calculated effort to circumvent the court ruling, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, saying the land transfer "would leave a little donut hole of land with a cross in the midst of a vast federal preserve."

But the lower court "did not acknowledge the statute's significance," Justice Kennedy said in his opinion.

"In belittling the government's efforts as an attempt to 'evade' the injunction, the District Court had things backwards," said Justice Kennedy. "Congress's prerogative to balance opposing interests and its institutional competence to do so provide one of the principal reasons for deference to its policy determinations."

The case was sent back to the lower court.

Peter Eliasberg, managing attorney for the ACLU of Southern California, said the organization would continue to argue that the land transfer failed to address concerns over the separation of church and state.

"Although we're disappointed by today's decision, we're encouraged that the case is not over," Mr. Eliasberg said. "The cross is unquestionably a sectarian symbol, and it is wrong for the government to make such a deliberate effort to maintain it as a national memorial."

The Mojave Cross is now encased in a plywood box, hidden from view while litigation is ongoing. The original wooden cross has been replaced several times, and the current version is constructed of white metal.

"Congress has repeatedly voted overwhelmingly to protect the Mojave Cross as a memorial to veterans and those who have died to defend our nation, never intending it to be preserved as a religious symbol," said Mr. Lewis, whose district includes the desert area where the cross is located.

"I am gratified that the Supreme Court has upheld the right and authority of Congress to seek these solutions in memory of our veterans," he said.

The decision came as a victory for religious-freedom groups fighting efforts to eliminate religious symbols and references from the public square.

"A passive monument acknowledging our nation's religious heritage cannot be interpreted as an establishment of religion," said Joseph Infranco, senior counsel of the Alliance Defense Fund, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief defending the cross. "To make that accusation, one must harbor both a hostility to the nation's history and a deep misunderstanding of the First Amendment."

Eric Rassbach, national litigation director of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which also filed a brief in the case, applauded the ruling as "simple common sense."

"The First Amendment guarantees the right to speak and believe freely; it does not give busybodies the right to cut down religious symbols they don't like," Mr. Rassbach said.

At the same time, the ruling leaves unanswered several questions, such as what legal standard should be applied to religious displays on public property, according to the Becket Fund.

The cross supporters had feared that an unfavorable ruling would have jeopardized the nation's hundreds of cross-bearing roadside memorials, as well as other war memorials.

At least two other cross cases are in federal courts. One concerns a 29-foot cross at a war memorial on Mount Soledad near San Diego and the other the 12-foot roadside crosses that Utah uses to memorialize highway patrol troopers killed in the line of duty.

Court backs Mojave cross deal; case sent back to 9th Circuit

Joe Nelson, Staff Writer
Redlands Daily Facts

A divided U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that a lower court erred when it invalidated a land transfer that prompted the veiling of a 76-year-old Latin cross in the Mojave National Preserve honoring fallen soldiers.
In a 5-4 ruling, with the court's conservatives in the majority, justices remanded the case back to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to reconsider its decision.

The Supreme Court majority voiced strong support for allowing the nearly 6-foot-tall cross, which has stood in various forms in the Mojave National Preserve for more than 70 years, to stay.

"The goal of avoiding governmental endorsement does not require eradication of all religious symbols in the public realm," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in his opinion.

The cross, crafted from metal pipe, was erected by members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in 1934 to honor American soldiers who died during World War I. It sits in an area called Sunrise Rock, about 11 miles south of the 15 Freeway, east side of Cima Road.

"A Latin cross is not merely a reaffirmation of Christian beliefs. It is a symbol often used to honor and respect those whose heroic acts, noble contributions and patient striving help secure an honored place in history for this nation and its people," Kennedy wrote. "Here, one Latin cross in the desert evokes far more than religion. It evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles, battles whose tragedies are compounded if the fallen are forgotten."

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens agreed that soldiers who died in battle deserve a memorial to their service. But the government "cannot lawfully do so by continued endorsement of a starkly sectarian message."

In 2001, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the National Park Service on behalf of retired Mojave National Preserve Assistant Superintendent Frank Buono, who argued the presence of a sectarian religious symbol on public property was not admissable, said ACLU attorney Peter Eliasberg.

Buono argued that the government had showed favoritism to one religion and cited the Park Service's denial of an application to erect a Buddhist symbol near the memorial.

About a decade ago, the land on which the cross sits was incorporated into the Mojave National Preserve by executive order from President Bill Clinton.

In 2004, Congress authorized the transfer of the one acre of land under the cross back to the VFW, a private organization, in exchange for five acres of other land.

The ACLU argued the land transfer was unconstitutional.

"Although we're disappointed by today's decision, we're encouraged that the case is not over," Eliasberg said in a statement Wednesday.

He said the ACLU will continue to argue that the cross, as it currently stands, does not remedy the government's unconstitutional endorsement of one particular religion.

Joseph Infranco, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, said the Supreme Court's decision sends a strong message to the 9th Circuit court.

"If they do not straighten this out and get it right and allow the land transfer to stand, I'd be surprised if the Supreme Court does not overturn them again and slap their hand a little harder," Infranco said.

The cross has been veiled by plywood for the last several years as the case has wound its way through the courts. It will remain veiled until the 9th Circuit court makes its decision, maybe longer, Infranco said.

San Bernardino County Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt, a former Marine whose district spans much of the High Desert, applauded the Supreme Court's decision.

"This is great news for the memory of fallen soldiers and for all who treasure this historical landmark in the Mojave Desert," Mitzelfelt said.

Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands, also praised the high court's ruling.

"Congress has repeatedly voted overwhelmingly to protect the Mojave cross as a memorial to veterans and those who have died to defend our nation, never intending it to be preserved as a religious symbol," Lewis said in a statement Wednesday. "I am gratified that the Supreme Court has upheld the right and authority of Congress to seek these solutions in memory of our veterans."

Mojave cross case: a signal on religious symbols

By MARK SHERMAN | Associated Press Writer
San Luis Obispo Tribune

The Supreme Court's conservative majority signaled a greater willingness to allow religious symbols on public land Wednesday, a stance that could have important implications for future church-state disputes.

By a 5-4 vote, the court refused to order the removal of a congressionally endorsed war memorial cross from its longtime home atop a remote rocky outcropping in California's Mojave Desert.

The court directed a federal judge to look again at Congress' plan to transfer the patch of U.S. land beneath the 7-foot-tall cross made of metal pipe to private ownership.

Federal courts had rejected the land transfer as insufficient to eliminate constitutional concern about a religious symbol on public land - in this case in the Mojave National Preserve.

While the holding Wednesday was narrow, the language of the justices in the majority, and particularly the opinion of Anthony Kennedy, suggested a more permissive view of religious symbols on public land in future cases.

Federal courts currently are weighing at least two other cross cases, a 29-foot cross and war memorial on Mt. Soledad in San Diego and Utah's use of 12-foot-high crosses on roadside memorials honoring fallen highway patrol troopers.

"The Constitution does not oblige government to avoid any public acknowledgment of religion's role in society," wrote Kennedy, who usually is in the court's center on church-state issues.

Speaking of the Christian cross in particular, Kennedy said it is wrong to view it merely as a religious symbol. "Here one Latin cross in the desert evokes far more than religion. It evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles, battles whose tragedies are compounded if the fallen are forgotten," he said.

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens agreed that soldiers who died in battle deserve a memorial to their service. But the government "cannot lawfully do so by continued endorsement of a starkly sectarian message," Stevens said.

The cross has stood on Sunrise Rock in the 1.6 million-acre Mojave preserve since 1934, put there by the Veterans of Foreign Wars as a memorial to World War I dead. It has been covered with plywood for the past several years following the court rulings.

Justice Samuel Alito, part of Wednesday's majority, noted the remoteness of the location. "At least until this litigation, it is likely that the cross was seen by more rattlesnakes than humans," Alito said, although he also pointed out that Easter services have long been held there.

The controversy began when a retired National Park Service employee, Frank Buono, filed a lawsuit complaining about the cross on public land. Federal courts sided with Buono and ordered the cross' removal.

In 2003, Congress stepped in and transferred the land where the cross stands to private hands to address the court rulings. But the courts said the land transfer was, in effect, an unacceptable end run around the constitutional problem.

In Wednesday's case, six justices wrote separate opinions and none spoke for a majority of the court.

But supporters of the cross memorials were pleased with Kennedy's language, especially because Alito and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas would have gone further. Chief Justice John Roberts signed onto Kennedy's opinion.

"We know this is just the beginning. Until that box comes off that veterans' memorial, the veterans consider that a disgrace," said Kelly Shackelford, chief counsel at the conservative Liberty Legal Institute in Plano, Texas. He wrote a brief for several veterans' groups.

"We hope that some of the statements of Justice Kennedy go to the bigger issue, attacks on any veterans memorial that has any sort of religious imagery," Shackelford said.

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, called the court's reasoning "bogus."

"It's alarming that the high court continues to undermine the separation of church and state. Nothing good can come from this trend," Lynn said. "The court majority seems to think the cross is not always a Christian symbol. I think all Americans know better than that."

Muslim and Jewish war veteran groups complained in court papers that they view the Mojave cross as a religious symbol that excludes them. The Jewish War Veterans called the cross "a powerful Christian symbol" and "not a symbol of any other religion."

Stevens largely agreed. He called the Mojave cross a "dramatically inadequate and inappropriate tribute." Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor joined his opinion, while Justice Stephen Breyer also dissented.

High court supports Mojave cross in Calif.

By MARK SHERMAN
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court said Wednesday that a lower court went too far in ordering the removal of a war memorial cross from its longtime home atop a remote outcropping on federal land in California.

Signaling support for keeping the cross, the justices ordered the federal court in California to look again at Congress' plan to transfer a patch of federal land beneath the cross into private hands.

The lower court had barred the land transfer as insufficient to eliminate concern about a religious symbol on public land in this case, the Mojave National Preserve.

The 5-4 ruling, with the court's conservatives in the majority, could have important implications for future church-state disputes.

The VFW erected the large cross in the federal preserve more than 75 years ago.

The cross 7 feet tall, made of 3-inch metal pipe filled with concrete to deter vandals has been covered with plywood for the past several years as the case made its way through court.

"Here one Latin cross in the desert evokes far more than religion. It evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles, battles whose tragedies are compounded if the fallen are forgotten," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote.

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens agreed that soldiers who died in battle deserve a memorial to their service. But the government "cannot lawfully do so by continued endorsement of a starkly sectarian message," Stevens said.

Six justices wrote separate opinions and none spoke for a majority of the court. The holding itself was narrow, ordering lower courts to look again at the transfer of land from the government to private control.

Lower federal courts previously ruled that the cross' location on public land violated the Constitution and that the land transfer was, in effect, an end run around the constitutional problem.

Kennedy, who usually is in the court's center on church-state issues, suggested there may have been no problem in the first place.

"The goal of avoiding governmental endorsement does not require eradication of all religious symbols in the public realm," Kennedy said.

Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas would have gone further than Kennedy and Chief Justice John Roberts, who joined Kennedy's opinion.

Alito said he would allow the land transfer, barred until now, to take effect. Scalia and Thomas said they would not even have allowed the former National Park Service employee who complained about the cross to bring his objection to the transfer into court.

Roberts took a decidedly commonsense approach to the matter. At the argument in October, a lawyer argued there probably would be no objection if the government took down the cross, sold the land to the VFW, and gave the VFW the cross to immediately erect again.

"I do not see how it can make a difference for the government to skip that empty ritual and do what Congress told it to do sell the land with the cross on it," Roberts said.

Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor also dissented.

Supreme Court Sends 'Mojave Cross' Case Back For More Work

By Mark Memmott
NPR

A lower court was wrong to invalidate a plan that would keep the "Mojave cross" on top of a rock formation in what is now the Mojave National Preserve, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision announced this morning.

The court did not directly address the issue that had brought the case national attention: Whether the cross, because it is on federal land, violates the Constitution's ban on government establishment of religion.

Instead, the opinion (written by Justice Anthony Kennedy) focuses on the question of whether lower courts were right in rejecting a plan to transfer control of the land around the cross from the government to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, which placed the cross on the rock in 1934.

"A court may order an injunction only after taking into account all the circumstances bearing on the need for prospective relief," the opinion reads. "Here, the District Court did not engage in the appropriate inquiry. The land-transfer statute was a substantial change in circumstances bearing on the propriety of the requested relief. By dismissing as illicit the motives of Congress in passing it, the District Court took insufficient account of the context in which the statute was enacted and the reasons for its passage."

The case now goes back to the lower courts.

Supreme Court Sends Cross Case Back

by Jeremy Weber
Christianity Today

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Wednesday that the much-debated war memorial cross in Mojave National Preserve may remain because Congress' attempted transfer of the plot of land to private hands would resolve any constitutional concerns.

Unsurprisingly, the Court did not directly address the bigger Establishment Clause question of religious symbols on public land, instead ordering a lower court to reassess its challenge to the land transfer solution.

Update: Carl Esbeck tells CT that today's Supreme Court ruling on the Mojave cross is more newsworthy to evangelical church-state watchers than most media have portrayed.

Esbeck, professor of law at the University of Missouri, explains that Justice Anthony Kennedy sent the case back to the district court for additional fact-finding on whether Congress’ purpose in ordering the land swap was religious or secular, i.e. an evasion of the trial court's injunction or an accommodation to those wanting to preserve a war memorial. But Esbeck believes that Kennedy actually says quite a lot about how he thinks a court majority—and hence the Establishment Clause—should handle this kind of religious symbol on government property case.

“It would be a shame for evangelicals to think nothing has changed,” said Esbeck. “The way this will be spun is ‘everything was murky and unclear before, and everything is still murky and unclear.’ That is a way of covering up the loss, because the ACLU victory below was reversed. Are things crystal clear? No. But the ball has moved towards religious symbols on government property not violating the Establishment Clause, and now we know where [Chief Justice John] Roberts and [Justice Samuel] Alito—who are new to the Court—stand.”

“Press releases from the usual crowd probably overstate the scope of the opinion,” said Esbeck. “But it would be wrong to just say this case was not a loss for the ACLU. Kennedy has language that says of course the Roman cross is a Christian cross, but symbols can have multiple meanings, and it is clear in this case that the 70-year-old cross has taken on the message of a war memorial. This language will help the briefs of ACLJ, ADF, etc. And Roberts and Alito signed on to this language in Kennedy’s opinion. Further, Kennedy has never been so forthright on these Establishment issues.”

Esbeck says debate will now shift to whether the congressional purpose in swapping land was religious or not. The case could potentially go all the way back up to the Ninth Circuit and maybe the Supreme Court again, though this process will take years.

The ruling may improve of the odds of religious symbols remaining in public spaces, but Esbeck sees the justifications cited as a mixed blessing.

“I’m not a big fan of religious symbols on government property,” said Esbeck. “I believe there is a detriment because it dilutes the real purpose of the symbol. They’ve taken a symbol of the church and turned it into civil religion. This can be bad for evangelicals because when people look at a nativity scene or a Roman cross, we want people to think of the God of the Bible. If these too become simply civil religion to Americans, it makes the task of evangelism harder for Christians.”

Court Says Cross Can Remain

Mojave Desert Icon Is Deemed More Veterans' Memorial Than Religious Symbol

By JESS BRAVIN
Wall Street Journal



The cross, originally put up by World War I veterans, has stood for generations in the Mojave preserve. (Associated Press)



WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court blessed congressional efforts to maintain a cross that has stood for generations in California's Mojave National Preserve, reversing lower courts that found the symbol an unconstitutional endorsement of Christianity.

"The goal of avoiding governmental endorsement does not require eradication of all religious symbols in the public realm," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the plurality. World War I veterans first erected the cross as a memorial to fallen comrades, he wrote, and more than religion alone, "it evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles, battles whose tragedies are compounded if the fallen are forgotten."

The justices split 5-4 along their right-left divide. But they splintered in their reasoning, with conservatives delivering four different opinions and liberals issuing two dissents.

"The nation should memorialize the service of those who fought and died in World War I," Justice John Paul Stevens, the court's only wartime veteran, wrote in dissent. "But it cannot do so lawfully by continued endorsement of a starkly sectarian message."

The cross—estimated at five to seven feet tall—stands on Sunrise Rock in a remote patch of desert. Veterans, some of whom had moved to the region for health reasons, first erected a cross at the site in 1934 and it was often used for Easter services. The current version was assembled from painted metal pipes in 1998 by Henry Sandoz of Yucca Valley, Calif.

In 2000, a retired park-service employee, Frank Buono, complained that the cross's presence violated the First Amendment ban on a government "establishment of religion." Several years of litigation and legislation followed, with Congress taking several steps to protect the cross, including a ban on using federal funds to remove the symbol and a 2002 declaration that it was a "national memorial" dedicated to World War I veterans.

After lower courts found the cross in violation of the Establishment Clause, Congress attempted to end the matter by transferring the property on which it sits to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, in exchange for other property in the region owned by Mr. Sandoz. Lower courts found the land swap itself unconstitutional.

Justice Kennedy, writing for himself and Chief Justice John Roberts, found that lower courts had been too quick to dismiss the land transfer. "Placement of the cross on government-owned land was not an attempt to set the imprimatur of the state on a particular creed," he wrote, but rather "intended simply to honor our nation's fallen soldiers."

Over the decades, "the cross and the cause it commemorated had become entwined in the public consciousness," he wrote. The lower courts were directed to reconsider their decision and weigh alternatives to removing the cross, such as placing signs to indicate the VFW's ownership of the land.

Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito wrote or joined separate opinions stating their own reasons.

Although the decision could be read to endorse land transfers in similar situations, Justice Kennedy said the court intentionally avoided making any "sweeping pronouncements" on the line between church and state. Due to the "highly fact-specific nature" of the case, it is "unsuited for announcing categorical rules," he wrote.

Justice Stevens's dissent argued that Congress wasn't taking action to memorialize veterans, but rather using their memory to justify maintenance of a religious symbol. He noted that the Mojave cross little resembles the prominent and nonsectarian markers erected for those who served in World War II, Korea or Vietnam.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor joined Justice Stevens's dissent. Justice Stephen Breyer dissented separately.

Supreme Court Sides With Interior on Mojave Desert Cross

By GABRIEL NELSON
New York Times

The Supreme Court ruled today that Congress and the Interior Department acted properly when they used a land transfer to solve a dispute over a cross on display in the federal Mojave National Preserve.

The case, Salazar v. Buono, stemmed from a 2001 lawsuit challenging a cross erected in 1934 by the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Frank Buono, an Oregon resident who had served as an assistant superintendent in the park and was a regular visitor, claimed the memorial to World War I veterans was unconstitutional because it gave the impression that the government was advancing a particular religion.

By a 5-4 margin, the Supreme Court ruled today that lower federal courts were wrong to dismiss as "evasion" the federal government's effort to transfer the land underneath the religious symbol. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the opinion (pdf) for the majority, arguing that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had failed to consider the profound "dilemma" posed by the case.

The Interior Department could not leave the cross in place without violating the ruling that the display was unconstitutional, Kennedy wrote, "but it could not remove the cross without conveying disrespect for those the cross was seen as honoring. Deeming neither alternative satisfactory, Congress enacted the land-transfer statute."

"The statute should not have been dismissed as an evasion, for it brought about a change of law and a congressional statement of policy applicable to the case," Kennedy added.

Congress had authorized a land swap with the Veterans of Foreign Wars, trading 1 acre of land around the cross in exchange for 5 privately owned acres elsewhere in the preserve. Previously overseen by the Bureau of Land Management, the site of the cross came under control of the National Park Service when the 1.6-million-acre Mojave National Preserve was created in 1994.

The white wooden cross, roughly 5 feet tall, stands atop Sunrise Rock in California's San Bernardino County. It has been covered with a large plywood box since a lower court ruled it unconstitutional.

Justice John Paul Stevens dissented today, arguing that the land transfer could itself be considered a promotion of religion. If the land had been privately owned to begin with, he wrote, there would be no question that the statue is permissible under control of the veterans.

"But the Government does own this land, and the transfer statute requires the executive branch to take an affirmative act -- transfer to private ownership -- designed to keep the cross in place," Stevens wrote, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer.

In a brief on behalf of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Solicitor General Elena Kagan said there was no reason to conclude that the continued presence of the cross would imply government sponsorship. The transfer handed over control to the Veterans of Foreign Wars and required the installation of a plaque dissociating the statue from the federal government, she wrote.

"Congress already has taken steps to end any continuing endorsement," she wrote. "By ordering the Park Service to install a plaque stating that the cross was erected by the VFW to commemorate fallen service members, Congress has required 'a clearly visible' statement of the memorial's secular origin and purpose."