A Tribute Before War's End

Lester Lauber, 68, a Vietnam War veteran, said he knows what it's like to come home tired from war without any recognition. Or worse, amid antagonism.

"In Oakland, it was a mess when we landed," he said. "We really were in disgrace."

The antiwar sentiments are not gone, only tempered, Lauber said. He visited a Woodbridge high school recently, and "a little girl asked me how I liked shooting babies," he said, wincing. "All wars have been fought man to man, uniform to uniform. [In Iraq], you are dealing with a war where people aren't in uniform. It was the same in Vietnam."

Lauber offered to help Roustazad organize the ceremony to give the project momentum.

"Why does it take a person from another country to build a wall?" Lauber said, adding that he didn't mean that as an insult to Roustazad. "He's probably more American than my own son. He's probably more American than most of us."

It would be a cliche and inaccurate to say Roustazad came for the American dream, because at 15, he didn't even know there was one, he said. Unlike many immigrants, he didn't come from poverty seeking wealth. His family was well-off in Iran, he said, and he left to attend boarding school. That lasted about a year.

"After that, we had the revolution, and I was on my own," he said.

Of that time in his life, he gives few details and only after much prodding. ("I'm a nobody. It's not about me," he said.) Roustazad said he worked as a dishwasher in restaurants so he could count on steady meals. He then found work as a mechanic on cars and aviation parts. He entered the memorial business 7 1/2 years ago after realizing the need for tombstones in foreign languages.

"No other country, believe me, there is no other country that will give you this," Roustazad said of his opportunities.

He grabbed his graying ponytail and held it up as an example of something he has here but wouldn't in Iran. "I can have a ponytail and still go to a meeting of pretty prominent people, and they still welcome me," he said.

Del Gallo, 40, said that when Roustazad came to him with the idea, "there were many heated discussions." Politically, the two are a spectrum apart, with Del Gallo supporting the war in Iraq and Roustazad an adamant opponent. And the political overtones of the project were evident from the beginning.

So, Del Gallo said, the two focused on the one issue that they and most Americans seemed to agree on: the troops.