November 19, 1998, San Francisco Chronicle, Grieving Survivors Mourn Their Jonestown Dead - Small gathering also honors slain Congressman Ryan, by Kevin Fagan,

November 19, 1998, San Francisco Chronicle, Grieving Survivors Mourn Their Jonestown Dead - Small gathering also honors slain Congressman Ryan, by Kevin Fagan, Chronicle Staff Writer,

1998-11-19 04:00:00 PDT OAKLAND -- The grieving and the angry walked up a grassy cemetery hill in Oakland yesterday and stood over a communal grave to take toll of what 20 years have done to the ugly memory of Jonestown.

For some who fled in the jungle as the mad preacher Jim Jones ordered a mass suicide and murder, the hopeless fury burned as fresh as ever. For others, mostly relatives who learned of the killings from afar back then, the anger had softened to contemplative sorrow.

For all, there was, at the very least, a sliver of peace in coming together on the 20th anniversary of the worst day of their lives: the day 913 souls lost their lives to poison and bullets at the Peoples Temple compound in Guyana.

A staggering 406 of those victims lie beneath a simple headstone at Evergreen Cemetery, and it is the annual assembling point for those who want to remember. This year was little easier than the previous 19.

"We have lived with shock, anguish and pain all this time, and tears still burn our eyes like the waters of the sea," John Moore, a retired Methodist minister who lost two daughters and a grandson at Jonestown, told the gathering of 100. "Nevertheless, we live."

Moore wrestled with his next words, and the crowd urged him on with calls of, "Say it! Amen!" He brightened, and thundered, "Yes! We are survivors!"

More than a dozen speakers -- from survivors to Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris to cult expert Margaret Singer -- spoke. The common message: remember the dead, stay away from cults, and try to help society learn from this tragedy.

"It was not a suicide in Jonestown, it was an engineered murder at the hands of a man who tricked them all," Singer said. "The people who got involved in Jonestown were good. But it happened that their leader didn't have the same moral and ethical values."

Leslie Wilson, who escaped through the jungle on the morning of the massacre with eight other people, said she had never spoken publicly of her ordeal until yesterday. She slogged 37 miles through the trees, her toddler son strapped to her back with a bed sheet, to get away from Jones' insanity -- and her group only learned of the slaughter when they reached the nearest town a couple days later.

Among the dead were Wilson's mother, husband, brother, sister and her sister's two children.

"I hid the past from people I knew all these years, told them I lost my family in an accident or was an only child," Wilson said, her voice cracking. "The shame for many of us who were in that place was too much, so we locked it away. But it's been locked away too long. I will hide it no longer."

The Rev. Jynona Norwood, who with her uncle Fred Lewis lost 27 relatives in Jonestown -- more than any other family -- told the crowd that a long-stalled push to erect a memorial wall at Evergreen is back on track. More than $5,000 was raised this week, and she said she expects the rest of the $35,000 needed in donations to come in soon.

The furious denunciations of Jones were eagerly welcomed by Stephan Jones and Jim Jones Jr., sons of the dead cult leader. They, too, came to mourn the dead and to warn against cults -- and they were greeted like long-lost friends.

"The hatred people feel for my father is justified, and coming here today was good for me," said Jim Jones Jr., who lives in Pacifica. "Now I can walk away and have some happy memories, because I haven't had them for 20 years."

Across the bay in San Bruno later in the afternoon, a smaller but equally mournful crowd packed the tiny chapel at Golden Gate National Cemetery to remember Representative Leo Ryan, the San Mateo County Democrat who was gunned down with his party by Temple members at an airstrip on the morning of the massacre.

State Senator-elect Jackie Speier, who was Ryan's aide and was badly wounded in the attack, told the gathering of 30 that she cherishes Ryan in her memory as a man who "taught us to be bold, take risks and to shake up the system." The group then put a bouquet and a U.S. flag on the small headstone where Ryan, the only congressman ever assassinated, is buried.

"We didn't want to make a big production out of this anniversary," Ryan's daughter, Erin, said quietly as she walked to his grave. "This is just a small gathering of those closest to my father, and it's not about tragedy. It's about the inspiring life he led."