Once Robust Texas City Pays Price of Peace : A nearby air base may be closed. Layoffs and failed businesses are mounting.

The tearing down of the Berlin Wall is what’s killing Ft. Worth right now.

There is peace. The Cold War has become a part of history rather than a nagging menace. The armed forces don’t need that endless supply of weapons and machinery. For that matter, the armed forces don’t need all those bases.

And it just so happened that Ft. Worth’s backbone was building the weapons of war and that nearby Carswell Air Force Base provided thousands of jobs and pumped millions of dollars into the local economy.

Carswell is one of the bases that the Pentagon wants to shut down as part of a money-saving effort. And General Dynamics Corp., the maker of jet fighters and other military aircraft, has laid off more than 9,000 workers in recent months because of the diminished military orders.

An estimated 42% of all the major layoffs in the state since June have been in Tarrant County, where Ft. Worth is the dominant city. The old Monnig’s department store, the last of the businesses that anchored downtown for decades, has been torn down and made into a parking lot. Likewise, the modern Dillard’s department store has been closed for lack of business.

“We’re in a pretty stressful time,” said Assistant City Manager Charles Boswell.

If this has a certain familiar ring to it--lost jobs, less money, foreclosures--the reason is that it could have described most any city in Texas in the last decade or so. All except Ft. Worth.

Ft. Worth had Jim Wright, the powerful Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives before he resigned in disgrace in June, 1989. And that meant Ft. Worth was bestowed with a great deal of congressional largess in the form of defense contracts and other military-related perks that kept the city humming.

That is no longer the case.

At a hearing in Ft. Worth earlier this month, the mayor and three congressmen tried to convince a commission on base closings that the Department of Defense had grossly underrated Carswell and that it should remain open. The audience was packed with 1,200 military retirees and others who would be affected by the base’s closing.

One of those who will feel it is Aubrey Mormon, a retired Air Force sergeant who makes regular use of the base exchange, hospital and commissary. He said thousands of military retirees had chosen to live in Ft. Worth because of the proximity to the base.

“There’s going to be a lot of people hurt. I could name you 50 people who have nothing but the base for a hospital. They don’t have any insurance,” Mormon said.

How Ft. Worth will work its way out of the downward spiral is still a major question.

Ft. Worth, which years ago dubbed itself “Cowtown” and “Out where the West begins,” has always been the town of rough edges compared to the smoother, haughtier Dallas just to the east. In the old days, it was a stopping point for cowboys driving cattle north along the Chisholm Trail. The famous stockyards were built when the Texas & Pacific Railroad pushed its tracks through the city.

Its love affair with aviation and the military began at the start of World War I, when the Canadian government opened three training fields. Carswell, the base that now may be closed, was established during World War II as Tarrant Field.

Ryan said that, among other things, pitches are being made to California companies in an attempt to get them to relocate in Ft. Worth, where the cost of doing business and buying homes is considerably cheaper. Others also point to the fact that the number of jobs in Ft. Worth has increased overall; that American Airlines, the city’s largest employer, continues to expand; and that the huge Alliance Airport, which will handle only cargo, is due to come on line soon.

And then there is Ft. Worth’s final ace in the hole: the Bass family. This mega-wealthy band of Ft. Worth die-hards owns, has an interest in or options on 27 blocks of the city’s downtown. In times past the Basses have subsidized restaurants in the downtown area just to maintain a sense of vitality in the city.

Now, a huge $30-million apartment complex is going up, complete with 11 theaters, in the heart of downtown. The complex was financed by Ed Bass and all of the apartments have been rented in advance.

But Boswell said it will take more than a downtown project to cure the ills of Ft. Worth. And the major priority should be to try to keep people from leaving big city problems behind them.