Marine Uproar Pulls Resort Out of Shadows : Military: A 20-year-old hideaway in Big Bear area comes to light due to inquiries into how commanders use their authority.

A former manager calls it “one of the best-kept secrets within the Armed Forces.” So low-key is the atmosphere at the Marine Corps’ resort lodge here, in fact, that few in town even know of its existence, save for a few neighbors sharing a rugged dirt road.

Now, however, with the calm of this secluded retreat rustled by controversy, the 20-year-old lodge and campground near Big Bear Lake have been drawn into a growing storm over the use of authority by the Marines’ western air base commander, Brig. Gen. Wayne T. Adams.

It was here that Adams arrived with his fiancee for both a military inspection and vacation in October, a month after taking over the western command at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

The Big Bear trip was among five taken by Adams and detailed in The Times that raise questions about the general’s use of base aircraft, even as he was disciplining two top aides about the same issue. The Marine Corps inspector general’s office is investigating Adams’ actions to decide whether he violated a ban on using planes for personal trips.

Two-story cottages that can sleep eight are priced at about $55 a night. The retreat is designed to allow low-paid enlisted personnel to get vacation lodgings at a lower cost than elsewhere.

But some officials familiar with its operations suggest that it has also been used at times as a playground for top Marine officers in this area, who can bump underlings from guest lists that are filled months ahead of time.

Cheryl Gurule, a civilian lodging administrator at the El Toro base who takes reservations for the Big Bear lodgings, said: “It’s common practice for (a ranking officer) to call and have someone bump someone. . . . Christmastime, any major holiday, it happens quite a bit.

“Everybody up the chain does it. It should never happen, but it does.”

The lodge, operated from the El Toro base with an estimated annual budget of about $100,000, is staffed full time by a civilian manager and two Marines. It is open to military personnel of all ranks nationally, both active and retired. Officials take first-come, first-served reservations, with Marines from air stations in El Toro and Tustin getting priority.

The off-base lodging--where several weekend conferences for top area Marine officers are also held--is the only one of its kind known to be run by a Marine Corps base.

The site features eight modern, A-frame chalets, each with a loft, kitchen, fireplace, living room and dining areas, all enshrouded in the landscape of evergreens, snow-covered mountains and blue skies that have made Big Bear famous.

Guests have access to five government-owned powerboats, three canoes and an assortment of other recreational equipment. Jungle gyms and toys are available for children, and the retreat is an easy walk to Snow Summit, whose president lives next door to the heavily wooded, 6.5-acre site.

Gurule declined to say just how often those with reservations are bumped or by what officers, but she pointed to Adams’ October trip last year as an example.

Gurule said she got two calls from Adams’ personal aide Oct. 17, telling her to find a slot for the general at Big Bear for the weekend of Oct. 27. When she told the aide that the weekend was booked, she said she was ordered to find a spot anyway.

In her schedule book, Gurule wrote: “Was asked to bump someone for General Adams to go. (The aide) stated he (Adams) wanted to get out of town. When I refused, (the) aide argued he would talk to my superior!”

After spending two days prodding someone to give up a spot for the weekend, Gurule said, she received a check from Adams’ office for payment for three nights.

Elizabeth Walters, who ran the lodge from 1988 until last year, said of the reservation system at the facility: “A lot of it depended on who you knew. During the holiday times, when everyone’s trying to get up there, you hear people crying about how did so-and-so get up there?”

Military officials at El Toro declined to provide access to the facility or to discuss its operations in detail. Adams’ military spokeswoman said the general would have no comment about any bumping.

“That’s all part of an ongoing investigation,” said Capt. Betsy Sweatt, a public affairs officer at El Toro.

In an earlier interview, Adams said he drove to Big Bear with his fiancee, conducted a one-day military inspection of the site--the facility is under his command--then took the next two days as leave, staying in one of the chalets.

It was what happened during that visit that has attracted the attention of the inspector general’s office. Adams, it turned out, ordered a military-owned C-12 Beechcraft from El Toro to pick him up at Big Bear and fly him back to the base for a memorial service for a general’s wife. He was then flown back to the resort the same day to finish his vacation with his fiancee.

The trip is one of five detailed by The Times that raise questions about the general’s use of military aircraft and that are being investigated by the Marine Corps.

Until reports on the trip appeared in the press last week, many both inside and outside the military said they were not even aware of the lodge’s existence.

“I’ll be quite honest with you,” Lt. Col. Ron Stokes, a Marine Corps spokesman, said in Washington after reading about the lodge. “I was quite surprised they had a house out of El Toro up at Big Bear--I’d never heard of that before. . . . That’s the one facility like that in the Marine Corps.”

While recreational facilities are common on bases, no other bases have a lease arrangement with the government for recreational land off the base, he said.

Stokes said the base-closure discussions that have been common in the Pentagon in recent years have never threatened the Big Bear facility because it is designed to be financially self-sufficient, relying on revenue from guests.

But Walters, whose former husband also ran the lodge before her, said the facility’s status as “one of the best-kept secrets within the Armed Forces”--as she once called it in a facility business plan--may have hurt it fiscally.

During slow periods just before summer, occupancy rates slipped down to 35%, sometimes forcing the facility temporarily into the red.

“The money wasn’t always there,” she said.

On occasion, additional money would have to be allocated through the morale, welfare and recreation department at the El Toro base, she said.

While the Marine Corps would not provide financial data on the facility, Walters said the resort has had an annual operating budget of about $100,000, plus the cost of capital improvements for plumbing, roof repairs and other matters.

The Forest Service leases the land free to the Marine Corps, Walters and federal officials said.

The site is isolated, accessible only by a back road whose dirt and rock is still lined with tiny streams from last month’s rains. A large Marine Corps sign marks the ungated entrance, along with a smaller sign warning that drivers are entering U.S. government property and that trespassers will be prosecuted.

According to some neighbors, the Marines do not take their privacy lightly.

“They’ve been quite hostile,” neighbor Sidney Sandstrom said.

Her Big Bear home, with its chicken wiring and remnants of the area’s days as a prime fox-raising district, is next to the Marine facility. She recalled taking a leisurely walk in the area and being asked to leave the grounds.

“I like to be friendly with my neighbors,” she said, “but they’ve been real aloof. There’s virtually no communication. They’re real militaristic--and to be honest, I don’t understand what the big deal is over there.”