On the first Saturday of each month, the Soldiers of the Light offer coffee, donuts, and conversation to anyone who walks past their home at the corner of Catalina Avenue and Sapphire Street. However, as that tradition continues, one more has ceased, as twice-annual ceremonies at the Empty Chair Memorial has ended.
The Empty Chair Memorial, built in 2005, is intended for America’s fallen military veterans to take their rest. It was built by the late Rev. Maitreya Bhagavan Friend, founder of God’s Eternal Universal Religion, who died in 2012.
The memorial consists of a concrete chair as well as a pair of combat boots before a wall reading “Never Forget,” featuring the seals of the five branches of the United States Armed Forces.
“One [veteran]…he kneeled down and put his hands on one of the boots, and he was crying,” said Ila Friend, one of the reverend’s acolytes, who lives in the home beside the memorial. “He was there for five or ten minutes, and we have people doing that all the time.”
The memorial was the grounds for annual remembrance ceremonies, on Memorial Day and on September 11. However, last September saw the final ceremony for two reasons, according to Ila Friend.
The first was that, simply, the events took too much time.
“We live by divine guidance, and we got to a point where we had to focus on our spiritual work,” Ila Friend said. “Even though it was a wonderful event…it took all of our, and my, attention.”
The second reason, she said, was due to the political division throughout the country, as last year’s Sept. 11 ceremony turned into political bashing.
“One of our regulars, Scott Fellows, spoke from his heart, but it was a political, conservative view on things,” Ila Friend said. “He had people calling him a racist…I did what I could to turn it back, but it was a bad feeling.”
Fellows is an outspoken Republican, a former Democrat, who supported Rev. Friend through his efforts to memorialize military veterans. “I’m a supporter of that kind of effort…people who take action and do things,” Fellows said.
Fellows comments, he said, focused on Islam. “There’s a danger for all of us out there, a small part of the Islamic religion as we know it today,” Fellows recalled, confirming that he did, indeed, take blowback for his comments.
Though Rev. Friend stressed that there is always a place for freedom of speech, Ila Friend said, the memorial is not meant to be a place of division.
Saturday events for coffee and conversation will continue, but if memorial events happen again, they’ll be spontaneous affairs, Ila Friend said.
Clarification: The article has been edited to reflect Scott Fellows’ political party preference.
