THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 24, 1995 TAG: 9507240026
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long : 130 lines
In the winter of 1994, few U.S. military installations faced a more uncertain future than Oceana Naval Air Station.
The sprawling Virginia Beach base narrowly had escaped closure in June 1993, even as a Norfolk depot that serviced many of its planes was ordered shut down. And in subsequent months, the Navy had decided to accelerate plans to retire the F-14 Tomcat and A-6 Intruder attack jets that call Oceana home.
Without the planes, the Navy would have no reason to keep the base. And with another round of closures slated for 1995, the loss of Oceana and the thousands of jobs it provides seemed frighteningly likely.
It didn't happen.
Instead, the '95 base closure process, which essentially ended last week, secured Oceana's future for decades. Rather than close, the base will become home to the Navy's remaining U.S.-based F-14s and the principal East Coast center for the F/A-18 Hornet, the service's new workhorse warplane.
The saving of Oceana, say some who fought for it, is proof that even seemingly soulless institutions like the Navy and the Defense Department can be persuaded to change their minds.
It's also a testament to the ability and determination of a well-financed, well-organized cadre of elected officials, business people, and military retirees in a prosperous community like Hampton Roads to outhustle and outmuscle a late-starting, rural competitor - in this case Havelock, N.C.
The effort to revive Oceana in 1995 began almost as soon as the 1993 Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission completed its work, said U.S. Rep. Owen B. Pickett, who would become the base's most visible advocate.
Having been surprised when the '93 panel considered closing Oceana, its advocates had ``an incentive to get started early to make certain that every possible avenue to exert some kind of direction over the process in 1995 was pursued,'' Pickett said.
A core group including Pickett, Virginia Beach Mayor Meyera Oberndorf, area Planning District Director Arthur L. Collins and retired Adms. Richard M. Dunleavy, Fred R. Metz and G.L. Riendeau - each of whom had formerly held a key post in the naval air hierarchy - began meeting almost immediately.
They soon focused on the F/A-18s and a Navy plan to put them at the Marine Corps Air Station at Cherry Point, N.C., near Havelock, as a target of opportunity.
``We just knew that was a wrong decision,'' Pickett said. Cherry Point lacked essential hangars and service facilities for the 160 planes; the Havelock community would be forced to build subdivisions and provide utilities, police and schools for the 15,000-plus pilots, workers and dependents.
By contrast, virtually everything the planes, pilots and families would need already was in place at Oceana and in Virginia Beach.
Through a Pickett-organized committee of area business, government and civic leaders, plus representatives of several groups of military retirees, the Oceana advocates established what would become a nationwide intelligence network on the Navy's 1995 base closing plans.
``We followed the organizational plan that the (Navy) department itself set up,'' said Pickett of identifying the people involved in the process and then finding retirees or committee members who could reach out to them.
``If a member of the committee was unable to go directly to the source, they would have a friend or a friend of a friend or somebody who could get to the source and get some kind of information,'' he said.
The network was so extensive that one insider claims, only half jokingly, that if two admirals in a Pentagon washroom happened to talk about Oceana, the conversation was reported back to Virginia Beach.
The network let the group track the Navy's planning for 1995 closures, beginning with ``data calls'' the service sent to base commanders to assess the facilities and the work done at each installation.
In '93, much of that information ``had been turned topsy-turvy in our perception'' by Navy analysts in Washington, said Bob Matthias, an aide to Oberndorf. ``There was some massaging done somewhere in the process that undotted some of the i's and uncrossed some of the t's.''
In other cases, said Jeanne Evans, Pickett's administrative assistant, there were ``nightmare stories'' of how the '93 data was haphazardly assembled and then passed, often without verification, to Washington.
By tracking the data calls for '95, the Oceana group was able to head off misinformation about the local base and encourage the development of data suggesting the Navy had underestimated the cost of the Cherry Point move.
``We were pushing information in as well as getting information out,'' Pickett said.
The success of that effort is reflected in a Defense Department report last February that said the Navy would save $400 million by moving the Hornets to Oceana rather than Cherry Point.
North Carolina Gov. James B. Hunt Jr. and consultants retained by Havelock officials challenged those figures, but the '95 closure commission found them valid.
Also going into the Pentagon from the Oceana group were the concerns of aviators and their families who were less than enthralled at the prospect of moving from Jacksonville, Fla., the Hornets' current home, to a remote, rural part of eastern North Carolina.
``The one thing that concerned the military people, both retired and active duty, was the quality of life,'' Pickett said.
``And that was a strong driver for a lot of the people who did cooperate.''
``We felt very strongly that the infrastructure here was much better suited'' for the aviators' families, said Riendeau, a pilot who formerly was the Atlantic Fleet's senior tactical air officer.
Pickett acknowledged that such concerns once would have been dismissed by Navy leaders. But ``in the new Navy, they realize that you don't get the best productivity out of people if they're working in conditions they don't think are the best for them.''
While Oceana advocates were quietly building their case, work proceeded around Havelock to welcome the F/A-18s. Thinking its battle won in '93, the community invested an estimated $25 million in highway, school, water and sewer improvements needed to accommodate the expected influx of residents.
Last February, as word leaked out that the Navy had changed its mind about the move, local officials scrambled to hire a consultant to fight the decision and complained the service had betrayed them.
By then, it was too late.
Hunt suggested that Virginia Sen. John W. Warner, a former secretary of the Navy, was able to use old connections in the Pentagon to turn the service against Cherry Point.
``It was sort of a fraternity sort of a thing,'' said one North Carolina congressional source, describing the tie Warner was able to forge with current Navy Secretary John H. Dalton.
But Pickett, though full of praise for efforts by Warner and Sen. Charles S. Robb on behalf of Oceana and other bases across the state, said the senators' role was limited.
The coordinated efforts of the local business community, civic leaders and the retired military network were more critical, he argued. ILLUSTRATION: U.S. Rep. Owen B. Pickett said it was the coordinated efforts of
business and civic leaders and the retired military that saved
Oceana Naval Air Station.
KEYWORDS: BRAC BASE CLOSINGS MILITARY BASES OCEANA by CNB