November 17, 1993, Seattle Times - Knight-Ridder Newspapers, Memorial Is Sought By Mourners Of Jonestown Dead, by Frances Dinkelspiel,

November 17, 1993, Seattle Times - Knight-Ridder Newspapers, Memorial Is Sought By Mourners Of Jonestown Dead, by Frances Dinkelspiel, 

OAKLAND, Calif. - Each Nov. 18, Fred Lewis makes a pilgrimage to a knoll overlooking the bay.

There, in a corner of Evergreen Cemetery, 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 in South America.

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 inscribed with: "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 San Mateo County 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, 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 today's memorial service at Evergreen Cemetery - her first.

So does Tim Stoen, a former 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.

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 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 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.

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 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, whispering that she would leave tickets at a nearby 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.

Not everyone connected to the tragedy supports the idea of a monument.

Berkeley resident Lawrence Layton, whose son Larry was convicted of assisting in the murder of Leo Ryan, opposes the project.

"I really don't see any purpose in things like that," said Layton, who believes his son became 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.