COLUMN ONE : B-1 Legacy: Glory, Grit and Grief : Thousands pinned their hopes on this flying giant, a symbol of the defense industry’s rise--and decline. Five years after production ended, those who built the bomber recall how it changed their lives.

On the barren plains of Palmdale, amid fields of tumbleweeds and dust, stands a cavernous expanse of buildings that gave birth to the B-1B Lancer, the most sophisticated bomber in the Air Force arsenal.

More than 7,500 employees of Rockwell International Corp. toiled in these massive hangars in the 1980s, developing, assembling and testing the bombers to meet a crushing peak-production schedule of one plane a week.

It was an enormous human enterprise, growing within six years from ground zero to a complex, nationwide network of 55,000 people--from secretaries and riveters to auditors, computer programmers and engineers.

The project helped create a boom that changed lives, winning thousands of blue-collar workers instant membership in the middle class. High school graduates who had worked in minimum-wage jobs were suddenly earning paychecks fat enough to afford new homes and fancy motorcycles. Engineers found themselves on career ladders that seemed to go in only one direction: up.

Together, their labors produced technologically advanced bombers, at a cost of $205 million apiece, that could carry 125,000 pounds of nuclear bombs while traveling 200 feet above the ground at nearly the speed of sound.

But when the 100th and last B-1 bomber rolled off the assembly line in 1988, the enterprise came to a sudden and wrenching halt, the victim of a changed economy and a new world order that made such strategic weaponry seem almost obsolete. What ensued was a dislocation as sudden and intense as the impressive marshaling of forces that produced the plane.

Managers who once scrambled to hire up to 1,000 employees a month had to keep up a similar pace handing out layoff notices. Workers who had racked up more than 10 hours of overtime a week found themselves either out of work or doing such menial jobs as delivering pizzas. The lucky ones who were able to find other jobs in the aerospace industry couldn’t help wondering how long their tenure would last.

The layoffs rippled through the Palmdale economy. The owner of Generations, an after-hours watering hole for hundreds of assembly workers, had trouble paying his rent. Motorcycle dealer Larry Lilley, who sold 100 bikes a month to newly flush B-1 workers, has been forced to live with just 25% of his former sales volume.

The B-1 project wasn’t the only aerospace program that became vulnerable to the economy of Southern California. But its start-up and wind-down closely mirror the boom and bust of the U.S. defense industry.

Of the tens of thousands who worked on the B-1, only about 1,500 still have jobs maintaining or updating the planes so they can carry conventional bombs.

The others have moved on, one way or another.

Some of the men and women who pinned their hopes for prosperity and job security on the B-1 easily adapted to the industry’s giddy rise and excruciating decline. Others were forced to make compromises they hadn’t foreseen. Still others continue to struggle.

What follows are snapshots showing how the B-1 project--and its aftermath--changed the lives of some of the people who helped build it.

THE EXECUTIVE: He Credits Plane With Helping End Cold War

It’s picture time in the lobby of Rockwell’s world headquarters in Seal Beach and Executive Vice President Sam F. Iacobellis is ready for his close-up.

The photographer poses him beside a 1/20th-scale model of the B-1 and asks him to lean against it. Iacobellis complies, but then he does something slightly unnerving.

He wraps his arms around the replica’s body and cradles it against his massive chest as if it represented something small and vulnerable--not a vehicle of nuclear destruction.

Later, when he gives the airplane credit for helping to end the Cold War, it becomes clear: Iacobellis loves the B-1.

“There’s no question that the B-1 was one of the factors that led to the termination of the Cold War, and quite frankly, to the demise of the Soviet Union,” said Iacobellis, 64, an affable man who turns deadly serious when discussing the B-1 project. “The Soviets felt this was a big threat to them.”

Iacobellis, who oversaw the B-1 program from 1981 to 1988, is now Rockwell’s deputy chairman for major programs, a job in which he serves as the company’s liaison to key customers on such large government projects as the space shuttle and the proposed space station.

His experience heading up the B-1 project played a significant role in his later promotions and continued job security. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Donald R. Beall still credits Iacobellis with the company’s success in completing the B-1 contract ahead of schedule.

Although Iacobellis was insulated from the kinds of painful adjustments most of his employees had to make when the B-1 project began to close shop, he wasn’t unaffected by the losses.

“I had friends who were laid off, close friends,” Iacobellis says. “Obviously you don’t feel good about it.”

But he said he believes that most Rockwell employees understood the B-1 project was temporary and were able to find other jobs when their work on the bomber ended.

“It is my judgment,” he said, “that everybody who worked on the B-1B is better off today, if only from their sense of pride and fulfillment of working on a project with this kind of impact on the country’s defense.”

THE ADMINISTRATOR: It Was Painful Giving Layoff Notices to Friends

When the B-1 project was at peak production, Ellie Waller audited two dozen expense reports every day. By the end of the ‘80s, she kept up a similarly hectic pace processing layoff notices.

“Just remembering those days, you were always wondering if your number was up next,” said Waller, 34, a cheerful woman who now serves as a staff administrator to the director of Rockwell’s National AeroSpace Plane program. “It seemed just when things seemed to settle down, you heard your best friend got laid off.”

When the B-1 program was winding down, Waller was a staff assistant for the chief of project engineering. As the person in charge of layoff paperwork, she was frequently in the uncomfortable position of knowing about a pending termination several weeks before the engineer knew.

The first sign of trouble was deceptively benign: Waller would be asked to type up an engineer’s resume and circulate it throughout the company.

“It was strictly confidential,” said Waller, who lives in Huntington Beach. “The employee had no idea his resume was being circulated.”

If, over the next few months, the engineer was not picked up by another division, Waller would be asked to prepare the paperwork.

When she completed the form, the employee was notified of the layoff by his immediate supervisor.

The workers were usually given two to four weeks, depending on their length of service, to find another job within the company, she said. They also were referred to the company’s in-house placement bureau, where they could receive freshly typed resumes and unlimited access to company telephones to inquire about other jobs.

“We tried to do it on Friday mornings, just to allow a little time for the shock to wear off,” said Waller, who is married to a Rockwell engineer. “If you couldn’t finish cleaning out your desk by the end of the day, they would give you a slip to let you come back to get the rest of your belongings the following Monday.”

Although Waller said she believes that the company did everything it could to help displaced workers find new jobs, there were times she wished she didn’t know as much as she did. Once, an engineer dropped by her office to announce that his wife was pregnant. She knew that he was just three weeks from losing his job.

“It’s hard,” Waller said. “Someone will come in and say: ‘Let’s go to lunch.’ You’ll look them right in the face but can’t say anything.”

“In the early ‘80s, it was a lot more comfortable because you knew there were other jobs,” Waller said. But since the B-1 project ended, “there’s just not that security,” she said.

THE COMPUTER PROGRAMMER: He Built New Life After Losing Job, Wife, House

Three years ago, Bruce Warden was writing computer programs for a testing device that helped monitor one of the most sophisticated bombers the U.S. military has known.

Today, the most intricate piece of equipment the 39-year-old Costa Mesa man wields is a pager.

Warden, who worked for three years as a computer programmer on the B-1 before he was laid off in 1990, is a security guard supervisor in Orange County.

The job, which pays about $18,000 a year--half what he earned at Rockwell--requires him to drive 100 miles a night to check up on the guards he supervises.

“This job is a matter of survival. That’s it,” said Warden, a bashful, self-effacing man who sports short-sleeved button down shirts and eyeglasses. “Like a lot of aerospace workers, I have a lot of pride. But you can’t eat pride.”

Warden said that when he was hired by Rockwell, he knew the B-1 project would last only a few years. But he figured that when the project ended, he would easily find another job at the company in his area of expertise.

He was terribly mistaken. When Rockwell no longer needed a full staff of test box programmers, Warden was told he had two weeks to find another job within the company. Unable to find other work, he started applying for jobs elsewhere.

His timing couldn’t have been worse.

None of the companies he contacted, including McDonnell Douglas Corp., TRW Inc. and Hughes Aircraft Co., had openings he could fill. When his savings ran out, Warden had to apply for unemployment benefits. After a couple of months, he took a job as a sales clerk at a Radio Shack store.

His marriage couldn’t take the strain. He and his wife of 12 years divorced.

No longer able to afford the mortgage on his Santa Ana condominium and unable to sell it, he gave the property to a friend for the price of the monthly payments.

Warden and Tammy, his daughter from a previous marriage, moved in with relatives. After a few months, he got a job with the security company, remarried and moved to Costa Mesa.

Although the work is steady, money is tight. Warden’s wife, Inez, is looking for a job to help cover household expenses. And Tammy, a high school senior, is seeking college scholarships.

Warden said he still hopes to find work as a computer programmer, but he has begun to lose heart. He no longer goes to job fairs--”they’re just meat markets,” he said--and he has all but stopped sending out his resume. He had a telephone interview with a computer engineering firm in Kansas last month, but he is still waiting to hear back.

Warden doesn’t blame Rockwell for his misfortunes.

“Rockwell’s a business,” he said. “Their job is to maximize profit.”

But he says he still thinks the company could have done a better job of preparing its employees for the realities of the recession.

“I won’t say the company lied to the people,” he said. “They just painted a rosy picture and then gave you your layoff notice.”

THE BUYER: Still Working, but Studying 2nd Career

Lori Jones vividly recalls the summer day in 1977 when President Jimmy Carter announced he was canceling the B-1 project.

Jones, then a secretary at Rockwell’s corporate legal affairs office, watched from a side window as dozens of engineers toting briefcases and boxes of personal belongings left the building.

“It was horrible,” said Jones, now a 38-year-old materiel buyer for the company’s National AeroSpace Plane program.

When President Ronald Reagan resurrected the B-1 program in 1981, Jones received a major career boost. She was transferred to the B-1 project to work in the materiel systems department, where she would analyze government requirements for aircraft parts. Soon, she supervised a staff of 25 people who processed purchase orders for the parts. And in 1988, she won promotion to the post of materiel buyer.

But Jones’ quick career climb didn’t blind her to the industry’s instability. The Long Beach woman never forgot just how vulnerable aerospace employees can be to shifting political and economic forces.

Mindful that she may in fact become the next victim of the industry’s downward spiral, Jones recently decided to launch a second career as a lawyer.

“I (enrolled in law school) because I wanted to have an alternate career if something happens with my job,” she said. “Aerospace continues to get worse. It’s inevitable a lot of us are going to lose our jobs.”

Jones recently reduced her work schedule at Rockwell to tackle law school, which she attends three nights a week. The schedule is difficult. In the hour between the end of her work day and the start of her school day, Jones prepares dinner for her husband, Kevyn, their two sons, ages 11 and 7, and his 16-year-old son from a previous marriage.

On the nights she is home, she watches the children and tries to study while her husband, a materiel buyer for Northrop Corp., attends business school.

“We see each other for a few minutes on Monday, Tuesday and Friday,” Kevyn Jones said. “But we’re finding we have to make these sacrifices because this industry is shrinking so rapidly and we honestly feel within a couple of years we’re both going to be out of the business.”

His wife agrees.

The way she sees it, she had more than two decades of career opportunities at a company that frequently had to let go well-qualified employees. During both pregnancies, she was given reassurances her job would remain intact. Her last return from maternity leave was even met with a promotion.

Times, however, are different. In an era of expanding opportunities, she would have expected to be a manager by now. Instead, Jones has worked in the same job for five years.

She doesn’t blame Rockwell. In fact, she considers herself “one of the luckier ones.” Defense contracts are fewer and harder to come by, and the aerospace industry may never be what it once was, she said.

“The economy is different, and we don’t have the threat we once did,” she said. “It’s kind of sad, but I don’t think we will ever see any large production contracts like that (for the B-1) again.”

THE ENGINEER: ‘I’m 61. Who the Hell Is Going to Want Me?’

Charles Goodwin’s morning schedule is booked solid.

First, the 63-year-old Rowland Heights man makes a pot of coffee. Then he sees his wife off to work. Next he cleans the house and does at least one load of laundry. Sometimes he baby-sits his grandchildren.

“The first few hours of the day, I play Mr. Mom,” said Goodwin, a large, fastidious man. “The only thing I don’t do is windows.”

It’s a strange role reversal for Goodwin, a former analog instrumentation engineer who was thrust into the homemaker’s role two years ago after he was forced into early retirement.

Goodwin, who was in charge of the on-board recording equipment used to monitor B-1 bombers during their flight tests, wanted to work until he was 65. But when the El Segundo flight test department was dismantled in early 1991, he knew his time with Rockwell was running out.

“I knew it was coming, but still it’s a shock,” said Goodwin, a 23-year veteran of the company who also worked on the Apollo space program. “Here I’ve worked for 40-some-odd years and now I’m being laid off. The thing that entered my mind was: ‘I’m 61 years old. Who the hell is going to want me?’ ”

Because of his age, Goodwin qualified for retirement benefits. He didn’t have to worry about his finances: With his house virtually paid off and all but one of his four children out of college, his pension easily covered the bills.

Still, he had trouble adjusting to the life of leisure.

“When I was working, I would get up at 4:30 a.m. and be on the freeway to get to work by 5:30 a.m.,” he said. “My first week home, I reset the alarm for 7. But at 4:30 a.m., I was awake and feeling guilty as hell for not getting showered and dressed for work.”

Goodwin became depressed. He wandered around the house “feeling sorry for myself.” He spent the days alone and when his wife, Jenny, came home from her job as the office manager of a doctor’s office, he sulked.

He started to feel better after he agreed to take care of his 2 1/2-year-old grandson, Daniel, during the day. But it took a full two years before he was able to enjoy his retirement.

Today, instead of sulking, he is more likely to be in his garage building a wooden birdhouse or a radio-controlled model car. He worked as a voting clerk during the last election, and has taken a couple of classes at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut.

When he craves the companionship of other aircraft enthusiasts, he lunches at Flo’s Airport Cafe at the Chino airport.

Goodwin said he is no longer bitter about his forced retirement. If anything, he is grateful that his tenure in the aerospace industry lasted as long as it did.

“I don’t feel I’m a victim because I went into it with my eyes open,” he said. “If I was looking for stability and a job that would have lasted a lifetime, I should have gone for a job in the post office.”

THE MECHANIC: High-Tech Hobo Goes Where the Work Is

For the last six years, aircraft mechanic Gerald Lovell has been a high-tech hobo.

One month he’s in Grand Forks, N.D., modifying the engine enclosure of B-1 bombers. The next month he’s off to Orlando, Fla., to install a new navigation system in 737 commercial jetliners.

“It’s like being a traveling gypsy, more or less,” said Lovell, 40, whose gray beard and slight paunch make him appear much older. “You run into the same people all over the country.”

Lovell, who helped build part of the forward fuselage for the B-1 between 1984 and 1987, became a technical contract employee shortly after his work on the bomber came to an end.

Sometimes referred to as “job shoppers,” contract aircraft mechanics are temporary employees who are hired by companies that need to cope with high workload periods. The arrangement allows the companies to avoid paying unemployment compensation for workers who are no longer needed when the project is completed.

With a wife and three children in Palmdale, Lovell said he doesn’t relish spending so much time away from home but hasn’t had much of a choice.

When he lost his job at Rockwell, he tried to find work at nearby companies but had little luck. To survive, he began to take jobs out of state.

In most cases, the work lasts only a couple of weeks, although once Lovell worked on a single project for five months straight. In most cases, “suddenly you get a phone call and you’re packing up the next day to go,” he said.

Being a contract worker has some advantages. In 1991, Lovell spent a week in Zurich, Switzerland, helping to install closed-circuit televisions--an anti-terrorism device--into the cargo compartment of Swiss Air’s fleet of 747s. And if he wanted to see more of the world, he could have applied for jobs as far away as China and the Middle East.

But the life of a high-tech hobo has also taken a terrible toll. As a contract worker, he is usually expected to pay his own way to job sites. Last June, he went to North Carolina to help install new belly skins on DC-10 cargo planes. The job was supposed to last up to a year, but two months after he arrived, the work ran out.

The company asked Lovell and the other mechanics to wait around until a new group of planes came in for repairs. But Lovell, who was paying for his own motel room, couldn’t afford to stay.

“I understand things happen, but they should at least pay your travel,” Lovell said. “You’re out on a limb. Some people say it’s the industry, the way it is. But there just is no protection.”

In September, a spate of personal troubles--including a death in the family and a disciplinary problem with his son--prompted Lovell to come home to look for work.

He hasn’t had much success. Unable to pay his mortgage, he and his wife recently began receiving food stamps to feed the family.

Lovell is reluctant to train for another field because he doesn’t want to give up the earning power of an aircraft mechanic. As much as he wants to stay home with his family, he is once again looking for contract work out of state.

“I think people in this industry are really taking the brunt for what happened with the economy,” he said. “I don’t think anyone could have predicted what happened with the Soviet Union, or that the Berlin Wall would come down. But the people who really got us where we are--the aerospace workers--are paying for the peace, more or less.”

Times researcher Adam S. Bauman contributed to this story.

Background

The B-1 bomber program originated in the 1960s when the U.S. Air Force began looking to replace aging B-52s. In 1970, Rockwell International Corp. won the main contract to build 244 B-1 airframes and had produced four prototypes by the mid ‘70s. But in 1977, President Jimmy Carter canceled the program. Four years later, President Ronald Reagan resurrected a scaled-down version of the program, calling for the production of 100 bombers. Rockwell won the main contract in 1982, but could not persuade Congress to approve more planes.

About This Series

Today’s article is part of an occasional series, “A Farewell to Arms: Reinventing Southern California After the Cold War.” As the massive defense buildup that shaped the region wanes, The Times examines the impact on individual workers, their families and a town.

* Today: After the glory days of the ‘80s, the people who made the B-1 bomber adjust to new lives.

* Monday: The decline in defense spending hits families where they live.

* Tuesday: El Segundo learns the price of peace.

Reflections on Life After the Project of a Lifetime

ADMINISTRATOR: Ellie Waller, now a staff administrator to the director of Rockwell’s National AeroSpace Plane program, handled layoff paper-work as the B-1B project was winding down.

THE EXECUTIVE: Rockwell International Corp. Executive-Vice President Sam F. Iacobellis, who oversaw the B-1B bomber program between 1981 and 1988.

THE MECHANIC: Aircraft mechanic Gerald Lovell, who helped build part of the forward fuselage for the B-1B, is now a traveling technical contract employee--a “hi-tech hobo.”

BUYER: Lori Jones, now a materiel buyer in Rockwell’s space division.

ENGINEER: Charles Goodwin, former analog instrumentation engineer on the B-1B project who was forced into early retirement.

COMPUTER PROGRAMMER: Bruce Warden, former computer programmer on the B-1B bomber, now a security guard supervisor in Orange County.