OAKLAND, Calif. -- On the 30th anniversary of the Jonestown tragedy, organizers of an annual memorial service here displayed the first panels of a 36-foot-long stone wall that is to be inscribed with the names and ages of more than 900 victims of the violence in Guyana, including Rep. Leo Ryan and three newsmen.

For a quarter century, efforts to create a monument like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial have dragged on for lack of funding.

But the Rev. Jynona Norwood on Tuesday pulled covers from two shiny black granite slabs on sturdy trailers parked at Evergreen Cemetery, where more than 400 unidentified and unclaimed bodies of Jonestown's victims are buried in a mass grave.

Mourners gasped, and tearful survivors scattered red and black carnations on the panels.

"Touch their names because touching their names is very healing," said Norwood, who lost 27 relatives in the Nov. 18, 1978, mass murders and suicides orchestrated by Peoples Temple founder Jim Jones. "Finally, they have a resting place."

The work for the memorial, however, is far from over.

Despite a $30,000 down payment, another $70,000 or more must be raised to complete the seven-foot-tall monument with an eight-foot red granite central panel bearing the names of 305 children who perished in Jonestown.

The crowd of almost 200 -- including temple survivors and relatives of the victims -- was one of the largest since Norwood started holding services to honor Jonestown's dead, whose bloated bodies have provided a lasting image of one of the most terrible American tragedies of the last century.

In recent years, more survivors have been attending the service, as it has become more widely accepted that they were ordinary people betrayed by a charismatic minister who lured them to an integrated church with programs for the poor.

Some bring their new spouses, and their children. On Tuesday, one brought a daughter in her 20s for the first time. And one of the last people to escape Jonestown spoke with a woman whose son and daughter-in-law died that day.

The carnage occurred after 15 members defected during Ryan's fact-finding mission to Jonestown.

Temple gunmen killed Ryan, three journalists and a defector on a nearby airstrip -- and all of their names will be on the monument, Norwood said.

But the minister made clear during the service that the Rev. James Warren Jones will not have his name in granite.

"To put Jim Jones' name on that wall is an insult ... to all the dead," she said.

Jim Jones Jr., the minister's adopted son, disagrees.

"The tragedy is we're villianizing Jim Jones," said the medical equipment salesman, who was outside of Jonestown playing in a basketball game during Ryan's visit. "Jim Jones was also a victim, of his own madness. We need to memorialize all the bodies, as a great loss."

Two other memorial gestures also marked the anniversary.

On Monday, a post office in San Mateo was renamed after Ryan -- the first congressman slain in the line of duty -- as a result of legislation sponsored by Jackie Speier, who was severely wounded in the airstrip shooting. She was elected this year to Ryan's old congressional seat.

And Sunday night, Lucite panels with the names of the 900-plus victims were displayed in San Francisco before being permanently housed at the African American Historical and Cultural Society there. All the names of the dead were read aloud during a private gathering of temple survivors.

"This is the first time they will be recognized as human beings," said Lela Howard, who organized the memorial and whose aunt Mary Pearl Willis died. "It restores the humanity of these people and gives their names back."