2008 Woodie Awards
"Soldiers' Stories" Told in Numbers
Event at Valley Cities Jewish Community Center lets veterans and veterans' mothers call for end to Iraq war.
Maggie Ownbey
Issue date: 5/25/05 Section: News
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Nameless, faceless statistics - official body counts from the war in Iraq. The first number represented Americans killed including civilian employees as of May 21; the second number was American wounded.
"I wanted you to be able to put a name and a face to coffin number 1306," Vicky Castro said as she placed two photos of her son onstage - one of a small boy at play and the other of a soldier who would have turned 22 this week. They were pictures of her son, Corp. Jonathan Castro.
More than 100 people came to the Valley Cities Jewish Community Center across the street from Valley College for an evening of "Soldiers' Stories." Sponsored by Neighbors for Peace and Justice San Fernando Valley, the program opened with the band Playing in Traffic singing original and classic anthems for peace.
The peace-activist musicians came together the same way NPJ-SFV did, meeting on the corner of Ventura Boulevard and Laurel Canyon on Friday nights, carrying signs and speaking out for peace. The group has been meeting every week since September 2001 when the first threats of war were felt-at the start of the Iraq war they held a special vigil.
NPJ-SFV co-founder Steve Fine, whose son is a Valley student, said the evening's focus was on the immediate situation: "Stop this war and bring the troops home."
Vicky Castro teaches math at Centinella High School, in Corona; the same school Jonathan graduated from in 2001. He was killed on Dec. 21, 2004, in the infamous suicide bombing in a dining hall at an American military base in Mosul. She became a member of Goldstar Families for Peace, an organization founded by mothers whose children have lost their lives in Iraq.
"We don't want any more members," said Castro.
