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AHRC News Services Orange County, California |
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By AHRC News Services |
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Imagine that you lived in a land where the authorities came into your house, forcibly strapped you to a gurney, transported you to a mental hospital and injected you with powerful mind-altering drugs. You would rightfully shudder at this exercise of totalitarian power. You would shudder even more if you knew that the victim's husband had laid down his life for his country so that it could enjoy the blessings of freedom. This happened here in the United States of America, in the sunshine of the golden State of California, County of Orange. Vera Armstrong-Cherry is the wife of Major Frank A. Armstrong II, a pilot who was shot down over Laos in 1967 To date he is unaccounted for. The U.S. government has declared him dead. For years, she fought like many other widows for information on her missing husband. She was shocked and deeply pained by the duplicity and lack of concern by the very government who had sent her husband on the mission that had ended in his death. She joined the only movement which seemed to have any genuine concern for the plight of those missing in action, Ross Perot's United We Stand. A number of years ago, she moved with her two young children into a gated development known as Rocking Horse Ridge Estates in Santa Ana, California. It seemed to be a patriotic community with a tall flagpole standing at its main entrance. She saw the other residents enjoying the American dream in their nice houses, surrounded by neatly manicured lawns. She soon realized, however, that the memory of the MIA's and POW's was far from their minds and had no significance for them, that they did not appreciate how the quality of their lives had been made possible by the supreme sacrifice of these soldiers, sailors and airmen. In an effort to have them recall the memory of these brave men and women, she decided to fly the POW-MIA flag along side the American flag outside her garage and circulate Ross Perot literature. She said that the board of directors, the management company and the association attorneys were furious when she refused to agree not to fly the POW-MIA flag. She said that they then began a campaign of harrassment and hate against her. When she decided to build a wall around part of her property for security, she said that the board president demanded that she paint it the same color as his. She says that he even marched into her kitchen uninvited and without permission, and threatened her with his fist. She stood her ground. Would he have done this if her husband had been there instead of having been killed defending this man's right to freedom? During this process, Vera began to question some of the actions of the board. She claimed that the board had violated state law by raising the homeowner dues by more than 20% in one year, from $130 to $230. She also asked to inspect the books of the association - a right guaranteed by law - but was refused. When she attempted to raise these and similar issues at association meetings, she says that the board would shout her down or disband the meeting. After months of this treatment, she threatened to file suit against them if they continued. As Vera realized that flying the flag outside her house was visible to only a small group of neighbors she asked the association permission to fly the POW-MIA flag on the flagpole at the main entrance. Not receiving it and tired of waiting (it was 25 years since her husband's disappearance over Laos), she hoisted the flag on November 2,1992, the day before the election. The reaction was instantaneous. Cindy Schaldenbrand, the president of the association, confiscated the POW-MIA flag. Apparently, the surface aesthetics of trimmed lawns and association-approved flowers were more important than the life and death issues of these missing men and women and of their families who lived in the community The fact that Congress had declared the POW-MIA flag to be an official flag seemed to count for nothing. The board then hired the law firm of Fiore, Nordberg to file a court action to stop her flying the flag and "in order to maintain the residential and aesthetic quality of this private, guard gated community." (Fiori, Nordberg holds itself out as specializing in representing boards of homeowner associations for legal fees. It has also come under fire for promoting legislation allegedly designed to increase its own legal income at the expense of homeowners. The terror was now to begin in earnest. While an investigation into the role of the law firm regarding her forced hospitalization is continuing, it is significant that Mark Hopkins, the firm's attorney handling the case, stated in a document filed in court: "Pursuant to the declaration of Mark Hopkins attached, the association is informed and believes that Mrs. Cherry will be committed for psychiatric evaluation under Welfare& Institutions Code Sec. 5150 involuntarily by psychiatric nurse, Kay Cantrell." (emphasis added) The above seems to clearly indicate that there had been discussions between the board and lawyer Mark Hopkins about Vera being committed at the time they were going for an injunction. Vera has no doubt that attorney Mark Hopkins, the board president, and a supposed friend, Kay Cantrell had decided to seize her while she was alone at home. She believes that part of the purpose was to prevent her from appearing at a TRO hearing in her own defence. On the morning of November 19, 1992, she was to join the ranks of the MIA's - 20th. century style! She was at home in her immaculately-kept house, when there was a knock on the door. It was Kay Cantrell, and another lady, Cheri Blanchard, who identified herself as a nurse. Vera said that she did not have time to visit with them because she had to prepare for parent-teacher conference at her son's school. They ignored her plea to leave and followed her across the room and up the stairs as she headed towards her bedroom to dress. It was then that they dropped the bombshell. "You are not going to keep your appointment at the school, you are not going anywhere and you are not going to use the phone. You are going with us." said Kay Cantrell. Vera protested and asked them to leave. She was stunned, alone and defenceless. She called 911 and the sheriff promised that they would be right out. Nobody ever arrived. Blanchard and Cantrell called in the ambulance drivers from outside - an indication, Vera believes, that Cheri Blanchard had previously determined to commit Vera without any prior evaluation. The two men dragged her on her back across the floor, down the sidewalk and across the yard to the ambulance, where she was tied to a gurney. The hospital report documents bruises. Cheri Blanchard stated on the official form that she was authorizing a 5150 detention on the grounds that Vera was "gravely disabled." The alleged supporting facts were as follows:Vera was allegedly "bizarrly dressed". No details were given to justify that she was dressed in a bizarre manner. Vera was actually wearing a gray shirt over a black jump suit. How many other Southern Californians dress similarly! Blanchard claimed that Vera revealed "delusional content in her speech.". The only instance she cited was that Vera claimed that people were breaking into her house.Vera has had her windows broken, the tires slashed on two cars, the doors sprayed with glue and egged. Blanchard did not establish or even investigate whether Vera's claims were delusional. Blanchard said that Vera had guns in her house. How many other Americans have guns!The fact is that her husband had been a sharpshooter and also used to go trap shooting. Vera has had them for 33 years. Blanchard then said that Vera was not able to find adequate shelter. Vera was standing in her immaculate 4 bedroom house in an upscale neighborhood. The house is fully paid for. But by now Vera was strapped to a gurney and on her way to the first hospital, Western Medical Center. When they determined that she did not have insurance, they refused to take her. She was then transferred to the Royale, which has a contract with the County of Orange to handle patients without means to pay. There she was held and drugged for 6 days, until a friend was able to get Bernard November from the public defender's office to secure a writ of habeas corpus. Her children were left at home alone. She never consented to being drugged, but was drugged anyway. She was held beyond the statutory 72 hours without an attorney being provided. Vera says that it is very hard to describe the sheer terror of being strapped to a gurney, then forcibly injected with powerful, mind-altering drugs, then kept a prisoner. She asks if her husband died so that his wife could be treated in this manner? And why was all this done? The chilling reality is that it was done for money - primarily for legal fees. The oppressive structure of homeowner associations is designed to be oppressive so that money can be extracted from homeowners on a regular basis by lawyers. Homeowner associations are cash registers for lawyers, rental judges and other vendors. If a homeowner protests against this tyranny, he or she is placed on the legal rack and drained dry of every available penny - even of his or her home. When Vera sought to keep alive the memory of those who had fought and died for their country, to get others to see behind the illusion of manicured lawns and the self-indulgent pursuit of the good life as defined by nice homes, shiny cars and the image of an upscale neighborhood, all the tools of power of the legal and medical profession were used to suppress her. And these lawyers and doctors profited handsomely from doing that. Vera's story is significant, not only because of the terrible things which were done to her, but also because it is an example of a new form of conformist tyranny. Associations are obsessed with making the external appearances of their developments look picture perfect. No blade of grass must be out of place, no item of concern must intrude on the manufactured tranquility. Under this tyranny of conformist aesthetics, the POW's and MIA's must take a distant back seat and the cherished provisions of the First and Fourteenth Amendment trampled under foot. The question that must surely arise is whether those who laid down their lives for their country, did so primarily in order that associations look pretty and all alike, or whether they suffered and died in order that freedom and the constitution might live. To die is bad enough, but to die for a society that values conformist association aesthetics more than the agony of those whose loved ones are missing in the service of their country, is even worse. The case of Vera Cherry cries out for justice. Does California still have enough left in it to see that she gets justice? On July 20, 1993, in Department 23 of the Orange County superior Court, she received a partial answer. Cindy Schaldenbrand, the president of the association board, was asking Judge Bauer to imprison Vera for 50 days and fine her $25,000 for allegedly distributing flyers about the POW-MIA's in the association. Mark Hopkins, the attorney for the association, asked Schaldenbrand about the flyers. She testified that she found them at various locations within the association. Occasionally, Judge Bauer would intervene on some point of procedure. Vera was not present as she was in Washington attending a reunion of POW-MIA families. The proceeding had the aura of death about it. Relentlessly and unemotionally, Schaldenberg gave her testimony about the alleged violations of the rules of the association. For some strange reason, probably to camouflage and assuage guilt, the judge, the lawyer and the witness seemed to feel a necessity to play out this ritual of legal niceties. One could imagine that a similar scene had been played out thousands of times when Jews had been sent to the gas chamber. "Yes, you have every right to due process, and we believe that this is a very important right. We are good people as long as we follow due process. This is the way reasonable people conduct themselves. Do you have anything further to say in your defence? Well, we have reviewed the evidence and found that there is compelling evidence that you are a Jew .We are sorry, but we must send you to Dachau. Please see the marshal. Next please." Despite that fact that no evidence was presented that anybody had seen Vera posting any notices, the judge found "overwhelming" evidence in at least 4 alleged instances that Vera had posted notices. He fined her $1,000 for 2 of the instances, and suspended punishment on the other two. At no time did anybody ever mention about the rights of free speech or the memory of those who lay in some far off jungle. The lawyer had earned several thousand dollars for the law firm and enhanced his chances of becoming a partner in it. The judge had scrupulously - to his own mind - kept to the rules of procedure and "protected" Vera's right in her absence. Cindy Schaldenbrand had kept the manicured lawns anesthetized of the memory of that horrible war. And yet the haunting image of those missing in action, standing in a long thin line at the edge of the jungle and watching in silence the soul of the country they love, must raise the question, "If they could feel now, what pain would they feel at the sight of their beloved country fining a woman trying to keep their memory alive?" It is probably true to say that this pain is far deeper, far wider, far more intense than any pain they felt when their planes crashed or a mortar shell obliterated their lives. For the pain they feel is the pain that a person who loves their country feels when that country is taken over by those who have lost their souls. |
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For those brave soldiers who fought but have not returned, and whose fate is known only to God,we must pledge together to them and to their families to remember them each day and to do everything in our power to speak on their behalf. To find them and return them to their own soil, living and dead alike, during a time of relative peace seems a small enough sacrifice in comparison. Can we in good conscience do less for the patriots who sacrificed their existence for us and our well-being. |
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| Please contact consumer advocate ,Willowdean Vance, for more information.
Please search the archives of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register for more stories about Vera Armstrong Cherry. |
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| A New Battle for Britain |
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California Wrestling With Changes in Homeowner Association Laws |
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| Homeowner Association Insurance, A Sword, Not Shield |
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| Homeowner Alliance Launches Nationwide Protest Against Chubb Insurance by AHRC News Services |
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| Need for a Homeowner Bill of Rights |
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| The Homeowner Bill of Rights |
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| Citizen Communications to California Government - December 25, 1993 |
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The American Homeowners Resource Center P. O. Box 97 San Juan Capistrano, CA 92693 Telephone: (949) 366-2125 Website: http://www.ahrc.com Email: ahrc@ahrc.com © 2001, AHRC News Services |
