Community memorials that were vandalized in San Pedro recently sat on “sacred ground,” one waterfront union member said.
Few crimes of vandalism have hit the close-knit waterfront community as hard as the destruction of memorials honoring the town’s early fishermen, the Merchant Mariners and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union workers.
But work is now pushing forward to right the wrong.
“We’re working with the community, we’re doing everything we can,” said Port of Los Angeles spokesperson Phillip Sanfield. That includes, he said, encouraging the groups that installed and sponsored the monuments to apply for port community grants to help fund the process.
The memorials are on what is now Port of L.A. property — a linear open space along Harbor Boulevard from the Vincent Thomas Bridge to the Los Angeles Maritime Museum. But the installations were individually sponsored and funded by different groups in town over the past few years and are not the property of the port.
Augie Bezmalinovich, the port’s community affairs advocate, has taken the lead for the port in contacting community groups that originally sponsored the tributes decades ago.
Meanwhile, fences have come down from the around the damaged monuments and the legal process continues following the arrest of three suspects. The port also is working with police to beef up security around the area.
The series of thefts that began late in 2023 and continued into early 2024 were carried out by what police believe were metal thieves who pried off bronze-copper plaques that could be melted down for cash. Three arrests have been made.
Similar thefts during that same time period plagued local cemeteries where grave markers were stolen; downtown Los Angeles where copper wiring from streetlights were removed; and thefts in South Bay beach cities, including Veterans Park in Redondo Beach and the plaque marking Bruce’s Beach in Manhattan Beach.
Paying tribute to San Pedro’s roots, the large pieces hold deep meaning for the waterfront community and included the names of many of the town’s early residents.
Work now entails trying to recreate what was stolen — ideally in materials such as stone that won’t attract the eyes of would-be future thieves.
The process initially looked daunting for Kris (Ursich) Pielago whose mom and two aunts were among those who more than two decades ago launched plans for a memorial honoring the fishermen who settled here from places like Croatia and Italy.
“A month ago I wouldn’t have been this optimistic,” Pielago said in an April 4 telephone interview. “But it’s happening, I know we have angels watching over us.”
The memorial included highly individualized bricks designed by families, Pielago said.
“Some (bricks) would say the name and the boat, another person would just say the boat’s name with all the crew members, they were very personalized,” she said.
She faced the task of trying to work from old photographs and other submissions residents could provide.
Impossible, she thought at times.
But as work began to try to piece it all together, bit by bit, a breakthrough came.
Pielago contacted Blue Engravers graphic artists in Long Beach, the company that did the original artwork on behalf of the project. After some searching, the shop found all of the original artwork for the monument — from 25 years ago.
“Everything was saved on an old floppy disc and they were able to get it onto a new program that I could open,” Pielago said. “They called last week and said, ‘Ninety-nine percent, we’ve got everything.’”
The engravers went “above and beyond” to track it all down, Pielago said, adding there are some 400-500 names on the memorial that was put together by so many in the community.
It put the complicated restoration project over the hump, she said.
The monuments, she said, “were beautiful and (the plaques) should have never come down. The people whose names are on those plaques were just great people, they built our town. It’s such a community treasure.”
Similar efforts are ongoing to restore the other monuments, said Greg Mitre, president of the International Longshore and Labor Union Pensioners.
A contact with the Merchant Marine memorial could not be reached for comment, but Mitre said work is underway to replace all four plaques in stone on that edifice. But it probably won’t be finished, he said, before the group holds its annual memorial ceremony at the monument site as it does every year on May 22.
The ILWU’s Harry Bridges memorial, meanwhile, was among the least damaged, Mitre said. It was installed 24 years ago when the union conducted its inaugural “First Blood” ceremony marking the union’s beginnings and all of the men and women who have since lost their lives on the job.
“We were lucky,” Mitre said, “only a couple small medallions and plaques on the benches were stolen. We’re in the process of working with the engraver now trying to figure out what we’re going to have done.”
But it also likely won’t be finished, Mitre said, in time for the union’s 90th anniversary event at the memorial site, on May 15, marking the early strikes in 1934 that launched the founding of the union.
The union is considering using stone for replacement materials. Pielago said what materials to use is still a decision that needs to be weighed for the fishermen’s memorial.
“We met with Port Police Chief (Thomas) Gazsi,” Mitre said, “and we talked about the (security) concerns we have down there.”
He said the union was told that no new thefts have occurred since these were discovered and the arrests were made.
“For the ILWU, the Merchant Mariners, and for the old fishermen, that’s sacred ground down there,” Mitre said of the memorial site.
“It just sickens me,” Pielago said, “that there are people who would take (a plaque) down (with the name of) a fisherman who was lost at sea.”
Pielago, the granddaughter of a fisherman, Anton Stanovich, said the restoration work is expected to take at least a year. They still have no idea how much it will all cost.
Many of the original organizers who established the memorials are now gone, she said, but family members and others are ready to step up and restore what was destroyed.
“I want the community to know this is not being overlooked,” she said. “This is a community effort, the Port of Los Angeles, the Port Police, the council office, everyone is 100% behind this and is doing everything they can. We have the support.”
In the months since the thefts, she said, she’d often walk away from the defaced and fenced-off monuments “just in tears.
“The community needs to know,” she said, “It’s not going to look like that forever.”
