Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, November 20, 1993 TAG: 9311200138
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-18 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder Newspapers
DATELINE: OAKLAND, CALIF. LENGTH: Long
There, in a corner of Evergreen Cemetery, near a pile of unused coffins and concrete grave liners, lies a mass grave containing the bodies of more than 400 victims of the Jonestown massacre. Buried there are 27 of Lewis' relatives, including his wife, sister and seven children.
Fifteen years have passed since the Rev. Jim Jones coerced or forced 913 of his Peoples Temple followers to drink cyanide-laced punch - 15 years that have failed to heal Lewis' emotional wounds.
"How could it get better?" asked Lewis, 64, of San Francisco. "No way. Losing seven kids, your wife and sister at the same time? It's hard to speak. It's hard to sleep. It's hard to do anything."
Embittered and angry, Lewis is driven these days by one thing: his campaign to bring some dignity to those who died in the jungle of Guyana.
He and his niece, Jynona Norwood, are trying to raise money for a monument to mark the mass grave. Right now, there is only a simple headstone with the inscription "In memory of the victims of the Jonestown tragedy." They would like to replace it with a granite wall inscribed with the names of those who died, including that of Leo Ryan, a California congressman, and three journalists who were ambushed by Jones' followers on an airstrip near Jonestown.
"Those people need to be remembered," said Norwood, a pastor in Los Angeles. "Those people were good people. It was Jones who was the evil one."
Although Lewis and Norwood have not had much success in raising the $31,000 needed - and often lead competing fund-raising campaigns - their movement has had an unintended purpose. It has brought together people from opposite ends of the Jonestown tragedy.
Assemblywoman Jackie Speier, a Ryan aide who was shot and wounded at the airstrip, plans to support the push for a monument, as well as attend Thursday's memorial service - her first. So does Tim Stoen, a former San Francisco district attorney and Jones' lawyer, who defected from Peoples Temple in 1977 and lost his 6-year-old son, John Victor, during the mass murder-suicides.
They will be joined by Patricia Ryan, the congressman's daughter, and Stephan and Jim Jones, Jones' sons, who were playing in a basketball tournament during the final hours and thus spared from death.
"What happened was so terrible and was so hard to understand that just now people are getting to the point where they can talk to each other," said Ryan, now a Sacramento lobbyist who also serves on the board of the Cult Awareness Network.
Norwood said she still can't understand how Jones managed to lure dozens of her family members into the temple. Her grandmother attended some meetings when Jones' temple was in Ukiah in the early 1970s, then persuaded other relatives to join when Jones moved his operations to San Francisco.
Norwood, an evangelical minister, allowed her son, Ed, to be raised by her mother in the church, but grew concerned when he described a fight in which Jones encouraged a 10-year-old to beat up on a 5-year-old. When Norwood heard that, she took her son and fled, only to be hounded by church members.
"They called me one day and said, `You can't hide from us,"' Norwood said. "No matter how many times I changed my unlisted phone number, they had it. No matter how many times I moved, they found me."
The harassment stopped when temple members moved to Guyana in South America in 1977.
Norwood said her grandmother survived, but "everybody she brought into the church, she lost."
Lewis' wife and children virtually disappeared overnight, and he never saw them again. "I didn't even know they were gone," he said. "I came home from work and my house was clean. I had a twin bed and a small black-and-white TV. That was it."
Beverly Oliver's two sons, ages 17 and 19, also disappeared suddenly. But she didn't wait for them to come back from Guyana. A former temple member, Oliver and her husband, Howard, made two trips to bring their boys home, only to be told by Jones they didn't want to leave. Oliver managed to speak to them on the second trip and whispered she would leave tickets at the Pan American World Airways Inc. counter at the Georgetown Airport.
The boys never got a chance to flee. Jones, worried that Congressman Ryan's investigation would tear the community apart, ordered the ambush on the delegation. Hours later, Jones put his "White Night" suicide plan into effect. Poison was squirted into the mouths of children. Some adults drank theirs willingly; others, including Jones, were found with bullet holes in their heads.
Billy and Bruce Oliver are buried in California, but their mother doesn't go to their graves anymore. She had a nervous breakdown a few years ago and finds she can't handle graveside visits.
"I'm still angry," said Oliver, who lives in San Francisco. "I'm sad and I'm hurt. I still don't understand. Why the children?"
But Berkeley resident Lawrence Layton, whose son Larry was convicted of assisting in the murder of Leo Ryan, opposes the idea of a monument.
"I really don't see any purpose in things like that," said Layton, who considers his son a scapegoat for Jones. "It's a bad enough thing to remember. I lost people but I'm not of the opinion that anything can be done to memorialize the people that are lost."
Stoen disagrees. "It's helpful for people who are still grieving to have a place to go," he said.
And one thing is evident 15 years later: People are still grieving.
by CNB