Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 10, 1993 TAG: 9310100129
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: D-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: SAN DIEGO LENGTH: Medium
"It's been played out of proportion. Out of proportion," emphasized John Moore, a burly white-haired World War II pilot who zoomed in from Florida for the first convention since the scandal of '91.
"The real problem is the way it was distorted by the media," said Walt Spangenberg, a retired Navy man from Washington who flew his first plane more than 50 years ago. "The impression most young female friends of mine have is the whole Navy is this way, and it's just wrong, wrong, wrong."
"It's like that at any convention," said Irene Wirtschafter, who spent 30 years in the Navy supply corps before she retired as a captain. "What's sad is how many men's careers were ruined because it was handled so badly. To have made so much of this thing . . . "
Few active military men and women are here. The mostly older or retired career Navy men and women walking around this modest roadside Town and Country Hotel - a far cry from the posh Las Vegas Hilton of 1991 - tend to greet outsiders with polite suspicion or silence.
They want the media to go away. They want the protesters to go away. They want the Navy to embrace their support association as a partner again. They want the 2-year-old Tailhook scandal to die.
They are even talking about changing their name.
For 36 years, the Tailhook Association convention - the name comes from the hooks on carrier-based aircraft that snag a cable and stop them when they land - was the place to meet Navy top guns and mingle with brass in daytime seminars and nighttime parties.
It took on a sinister connotation two years ago when dozens of women said they were harassed or attacked sexually by male Navy comrades.
As the convention began Friday, Tailhook officials told members that the group faces 12 lawsuits from women who claim they were molested in 1991.
If that's not enough to send these Tailhookers, as they call themselves, into a tailspin, consider a few other troubles.
Only 800 people registered for this convention; 4,000 attended two years ago. Membership dropped 15 percent over the past two years. The organization has lost most corporate sponsors. Annual insurance premiums have jumped from $8,500 to $33,000, and the group's budget is likely to fall $15,000 short this year.
To add insult to injury, the Tailhookers were feeling beleaguered by some of their convention-center neighbors. They were not surprised by protesters from feminist groups who marched around the hotel day and night.
But they did not like what they saw in an adjacent room, rented by the Women's Action Coalition: a documentary exhibition that starkly depicts some of the worst allegations from 1991 Tailhook.
They also did not expect a jab from the mom-and-apple-pie contingent.
A contestant in the Mrs. America contest, under way in a nearby hall, told hotel management she was concerned about her safety because of the Tailhookers.
Bill Knutson, Tailhook president, sighed. Incidents in 1991 were "regrettable," but some have been "terribly blown out of proportion."
"Remember, there were no injury reports, no rapes, no one was forced to go up there," he said. "We put on one of the best symposiums we had that year. . . . You have to understand, maybe everybody comes to Tailhook for a different reason."
by CNB