Defending El Toro : Ex-Marines Back for Base’s 50th Anniversary Oppose Closure

The Marine Corps only celebrated an anniversary here Wednesday, but Marines celebrated their lives.

Marines like Miles Leach, 79, a white-haired former gunnery sergeant who wears a hat and button and bolo tie clasp describing him as a Pearl Harbor survivor. And trim, bald Charlie Kimak, 76, a former squadron commander. And cigar-chomping Tom Scully, 67, another gunnery sergeant. And tall, wisecracking William (Abie) Greenhouse, 78, a master sergeant.

They remember March 17, 1943, as the date 50 years ago when they stood at attention as El Toro Marine Corps Air Station first opened its Tarmac to the 3rd Aircraft Wing amid the thrilling sounds of a brass band, but also as a date when the future seemed as frightening as war and as limitless as the sky.

“After being born in a dust bowl in Texas and having sweat for a year at the hot, miserable Equator, this place looked just beautiful then,” said Greenhouse, who flew in the South Pacific with the VMF 113 Squadron before being assigned to El Toro. “Orange groves. Nice weather. Bean fields as far as you could see. It was the most beautiful place on Earth.”

To his right, Strimple C. Coyle laughed and gave Greenhouse a friendly slap on the back. The tall, silver-haired former crew chief on a Corsair dive bomber in the rival VMF 223 squadron had just flown in from Texas for the golden anniversary of the base’s first day, which he remembers with youthful fondness.

“And don’t forget, Abie--the liberty was outstanding! Everybody fell in love here,” said Coyle. “All the local boys had been shipped overseas.”

Despite the warmth of the temperature and nostalgia, a cloud hung over the 50th anniversary ceremonies at El Toro. The base is on a Department of Defense list of military bases nationwide proposed for closure.

Base commander Maj. Gen. P. D. Williams toed the Pentagon line on the subject, saying in his formal remarks before a crowd of about 350 that El Toro “is not on the list because of its military value, or lack thereof” but because the Navy is leaving the giant Miramar Naval Air Station near San Diego.

“There have to be base closures,” he said, “and El Toro’s die was cast” when it became evident that Miramar would be a more suitable place for the Marine aviators to carry on their mission of supporting Camp Pendleton’s riflemen and the Navy’s sailors.

Most veterans in the crowd, however, did not cotton to that logic and took the idea of potential closure as an affront to good sense and the nation’s defense.

“This base is the very symbol of Marine Corps aviation and Marine Corps greatness,” said retired Maj. Gen. W. G. Thrash, a former El Toro commanding officer, in his own remarks to the crowd. “And all of us who have served here feel so strongly about it staying open.”

Thrash then quoted the Greek philosopher Plato to make a point held widely in the sea of aviator sunglasses and calloused hands before him: “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”

Miles Leach nodded vigorously at that line, clearly recalling the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, when he stepped out of an outdoor shower at the Marine base Ewa in Hawaii, only a towel wrapped around his waist, and saw a squadron of Japanese dive bombers bearing down on his barracks.

“We were so weak then that we practically invited a third-rate country to destroy Pearl Harbor,” he said, clasping his knotty hands tightly. “If they realized how much damage they had caused, they could’ve taken the island with one small, well-organized unit and we’d all be speaking Japanese today. We had no resistance after our first line was wiped out.

“So when they talk about closing well-maintained bases like this one today, it reminds me of our weakness then. It could happen again--with atomic weapons, we have to be ready all the time. Closing bases could backfire very badly.”

Even if El Toro is marked for closure when hearings in Washington end in August, it would take up to seven years for all the equipment to be moved to Miramar. In the meantime, Wednesday was a time for appreciating the planes with names like Cougar, Bronco, Skyraider and Phantom that preened on the asphalt behind the speakers’ podium like 10 million pounds of metal, pride and memories.

The public was invited to inspect their tax dollars at work, and dozens of children, men and women--even an Irvine Brownie troop--swarmed the shiny jets to gawk and ask questions of the young Marines who staffed the event.

Five-year-old Laura Navarro, for one, plunked herself down in the pilot’s seat on a KC-130 refueling plane that recently saw service in the Persian Gulf and Somalia as her dad, Gil, snapped her photograph. Referring to a controversial proposal to use the 7.4-square-mile El Toro base as a commercial airport in the future, he quipped:

“When she’s 20 years old, I can tell her that this was what the El Toro International Airport used to be.”

Then the Tustin electrical engineer quickly added that he doubted that would happen, if it were put to a popular vote of his neighbors.

“Give the Republicans here a chance to have a Marine base or an airport, and they’ll pick the base anytime,” he said.

CONGRESSMEN UNDER FIRE

County’s state legislative delegation had harsh words for congressional counterparts’ muted response to a shutdown. B7