Workers Celebrate Base’s Survival : Point Mugu: Navy personnel and civilian employees at a special gathering rejoice at keeping their jobs and cheer task force’s accomplishments.

Donning T-shirts that read “Mugu and I survived BRAC ‘95,” nearly 1,000 Navy employees on Wednesday celebrated the base-closing commission’s decision to spare Point Mugu and its thousands of well-paying jobs.

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“How sweet it is,” Adm. Dana B. McKinney told the workers congregated on the base’s soccer field. “I’m really proud of you.”

Point Mugu employees munched on rib dinners, burritos and egg rolls while rejoicing over the end of the threat to Ventura County’s largest employer.

“No more sleepless nights,” said Robert Dolan, a high-voltage electrician at Point Mugu for 19 years. “I’m awfully glad the base was able to stay open. I don’t know what else I would have done.”

Rosella Martinez said she was dreading the prospect of uprooting her two teen-agers from Oxnard and moving 160 miles to the China Lake naval base in the upper Mojave Desert. Several plans rejected this year called for relocating most of Point Mugu operations there.

“I couldn’t be happier with the outcome,” said Martinez, a secretary. “My kids were saying, ‘I don’t want to go there.’ ”

Budget analyst Diane Barreto was so tickled by the moment in Point Mugu’s history that she scurried among Navy brass, collecting their signatures on her “Mugu and I Survived BRAC ‘95” T-shirt.

“It’ll be something I’ll never forget,” Barreto said.

BRAC is a mangled acronym for the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission, which is putting the final touches on its recommended hit list of bases in the fourth and potentially final round of base closures ordered by Congress.

The eight-member panel, after weeks of closely scrutinizing Point Mugu, decided last week to bounce the base off the list and even acknowledged, “We goofed” for targeting the installation in the first place.

Office worker Marge Hays said she has noticed a remarkable turnaround in the mood on base. Before the commission’s decision, her fellow employees would pull her aside to ask her for the real story.

“It’s really nice not to have to keep propping up people emotionally,” Hays said.

Wednesday’s fete was not limited to Point Mugu’s 8,700-person work force of mostly civilian engineers, technicians and clerks.

Navy officials also invited political and business leaders and defense contractors who formed the BRAC ’95 Task Force to lobby on behalf of the county’s bases.

Task force executive director Bill Simmons beamed at the praise heaped publicly on the group by Point Mugu’s leaders. “This week has been taken up by afterglow,” he said.

During the speechmaking, Ventura County Supervisor John K. Flynn said he was impressed with the team that pulled together to fight the threat from Washington.

“It was like a missile headed toward Ventura County and we got together and blew that missile out of the air,” Flynn said.

Flynn and task force co-chairwoman Carolyn Leavens emphasized that they want to continue the alliance forged between the Navy and non-military community and tap into the technical expertise on base.

“We want to look to you as the brain trust of Ventura County,” Flynn told the crowd.

Base employees gave the most spirited applause to Steve Mendonca, a shy, mid-level manager who coordinated the effort to answer complicated questions from Washington about the costs of moving Point Mugu’s operations to other bases.

At various times in the past year, Mendonca assembled teams of at least 100 people who worked through the night to compile mounds of information within a 48-hour deadline.

Business manager Bonnie Beckman, who joined in those feverish efforts, said she and other team members felt a huge stake in the outcome.

“All of my all-nighters paid off,” Beckman said. “Now, we can get back to our real work.”