From the street, it looked like the Perera family was moving out of their Woodland Hills home Thursday.
Their lawn and driveway were covered in clothing, boxes of shoes, and other items they carried into a huge, 20-foot long container for shipping.
The Pereras aren’t going anywhere, though. The container is headed for Sri Lanka - to a couple of war-torn villages the family adopted last year and promised to help get back on their feet.
For the past six months, Srini and Frank Perera, and their two children, Jeneeka and Nininde, students at Chaminade High School, have been sending donations and supplies they’ve collected to rebuild schools in the villages, and give people there the basic essentials of life.
Food,
clothing and toiletries are donated by their family, friends, local churches and schools to help the Pereras fill that huge container.”Our home has been like a warehouse the last three months,” Srini said Thursday. “Every room was packed with stuff.
“It’s all going to the villages and camps that have been set up for internally displaced people.”
Srini came to the United States from Sri Lanka in the mid-1970s to attend California State University, Northridge, where she met her future husband, Frank, also from Sri Lanka.
“I just wanted to give a big thank-you to all our friends and supporters who made all these donations to help us fill up this container,” she said.
“For so many kids in the displacement camps over there who have lost everything, including their parents, it’s going to mean so much.”
Volunteers needed for Vietnam wall Labor Day weekend is still more than a month off, but the call is being put out right now for volunteers to help read all the 58,000-plus names on the traveling Dignity Memorial Vietnam Wall making its only California stop this year at Pierce Brothers Valley Oaks in Westlake Village on Friday, Sept. 4, through Monday, Sept. 7.
If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s a highly emotional tribute to all our U.S. men and women who lost their lives in the Vietnam War.
It’s a 270-foot-long, 8-foot-high replica of the real wall in Washington, D.C., and is expected to draw more than 80,000 visitors over the Labor Day weekend.
“After opening ceremonies, we have people continuously reading off the names day and night for 15 minutes each,” says Elaine Solis-Munoz, location manager at Valley Oaks.
“If there are families with a loved one’s name on the wall, they can read it and others, too.”
A lighted podium with a book containing every name on the wall is placed in front of the replica, and it takes more than 40 hours to read all the names, she said.
They also need hospitality volunteers to help people locate a name on the wall and escort visitors to it.
Any donations are used to keep the memorial traveling around the country, and to fund memorial honor details for all veterans being buried at Riverside National Cemetery.
To volunteer, call Solis-Munoz or Tammy Eacker at Pierce Brothers, 818-889-0902.
Dennis McCarthy’s column appears Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday.