Robert Bresnahan, Ex-Airport Manager : Remembrance: He guided the facility through explosive growth and once said “no” to the President.

Robert Bresnahan, Orange County’s airport manager during an explosive period of growth, died over the weekend in Mesa, Ariz., after a long illness. He was 70.

Bresnahan quit his post in 1978 after serving for 10 tumultuous years at what is now John Wayne Airport. He assumed similar duties at Falcon Field in Mesa, Ariz., and retired in 1990.

When Bresnahan arrived in Orange County from Riverside in 1968, the airport handled a total of 66,500 passengers. By 1978, the year of his departure, the facility--designed to handle only 400,000 passengers per year--passed the 2 million mark.

That growth made the airport the nation’s second busiest as well as the target for numerous lawsuits from homeowners over jet noise and airlines seeking landing rights.

Among Bresnahan’s achievements: installation of the airport’s first noise monitoring system and recognition as airport manager of the year in 1973 by the California Assn. of Airport Executives.

Bresnahan’s candor got him in trouble on occasion, as when he opined that joint use of the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station was the best way to meet Orange County’s ballooning air travel needs, a position that angered both the Marines and the County Board of Supervisors, whom Bresnahan criticized for not planning adequately for the future.

He assailed the architectural design of the 1967 passenger terminal as grossly inefficient.

Bresnahan gained national exposure in 1969 when he told President Richard M. Nixon that Air Force One could not land at Orange County Airport.

Just after Nixon bought his home in San Clemente, his supporters asked the White House to use Orange County Airport so the President would be more accessible to the public than at El Toro’s tightly controlled military airfield.

But Bresnahan said the runway was not strong enough to handle the weight of a Boeing 707.

Air Force One pilot Col. Ralph Albertazzi protested strongly and told Bresnahan that the President’s 707 was equipped with an extra set of landing gear to take care of such situations. Albertazzi added that he had landed safely in a lot worse spots than the Orange County Airport. Besides, he told Bresnahan, one does not tell the President of the United States where to land.

Nixon landed at Orange County Airport.

“I had the naive impression that I was working for the Board of Supervisors,” Bresnahan observed. “I guess I just wasn’t aware of some of the political implications.”

Mesa City Manager Charles K. Lester said Bresnahan took a small airfield and made it bigger, and persuaded Hughes Helicopter Co. to move from Culver City to Mesa.

“He put our airport on a pay-for-itself basis,” Lester said. “He was very energetic, very pro-aviation.”

Bresnahan is survived by his wife, Maybelee, sons Robert of Hemet and Gerald of Westminster, daughter Patty of Mesa, grandson Timmy of Hemet and granddaughter Teresa of Westminster, a sister Margaret of Huntington Beach and a brother, Roger, of Waterman, Ill.

A public viewing and rosary are scheduled Wednesday evening at Melcher Mortuary’s Chapel of the Roses in Mesa. Services will be Thursday morning at St. Mary’s Church in Chandler, Ariz.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to the American Cancer Society.