O.C. Youth Club Fights Boredom on Base

Air ball.

In an 18-story-high blimp hangar, 9-year-old Cody Ambrose scurries after the basketball.

For a second, the tiny boy slides under the big gray belly of a parked CH-53E Super Stallion strong enough to lift a 16,000-pound howitzer.

“Watch out for the helicopter!” shouts Gary Oustad, the Boys & Girls Club director.

Even a simple pick-up game of basketball is fraught with warnings for kids who live at the Tustin Marine Corps Helicopter Air Station and belong to the first official Boys & Girls Club on a Marine base in the world: Stay out of the flight path. Get off the court if the Marines want to play. And have fun.

The 6-month-old club is a centerpiece of the military’s new push to try to keep kids and families happy in an uncertain era of base closures and sudden reassignments.

These days, the number of family members on bases--2.3 million--exceeds military personnel by 34%. And, according to the 1994 installation commanders’ conference report, there is “increased youth violence, gang-like activity and juvenile crime” on installations worldwide (specific statistics are unavailable).

Yet, there has been no comprehensive Department of Defense policy or support network for youth--until now.

Last year, defense officials began awarding $6 million in total grants to 20 pilot programs for military dependents, including Tustin’s Boys & Girls Club, which is expected to be a model for bases worldwide.

It’s an awkward transition for the Defense Department, from war machine to social services provider for a youth culture with an opposing ethos: The military wants a tight ship; the kids crave freedom. But top brass have deemed family needs a priority, said Defense Department spokeswoman Lt. Col. Deborah Bosick.

“If you’re going to have a ready force, you have to take some of the worry away from people we are deploying here, there and everywhere,” Bosick said. “Being in the military is not an easy job. . . . We’ve got to take care of them and their families.”

Some youth grow weary of the military precision--the 7:55 a.m. taped bugle call, the 10 p.m. curfew enforced by the military police, the sentries who ask for their military identification each time they enter the fenced bases.

“Every little thing, you just hold it in and then finally you can’t take any more of it,” said Brian Cochran, 15, a shy Boys & Girls Club regular whose hobby is gardening. “Sometimes I feel like I’m in a cage.”

Tension is unavoidable.

“You’d be crazy to be much of a problem here--you’d get whipped into shape pretty quick,” said Ray Thomson, a Tustin club official who helped organize the base’s chapter. “There’s a code here, semper fi [the Marines’ motto, Latin for “always faithful”], right? They live in a much stricter world than today’s kids do.

“I think there are pressures here that the civilian kids don’t understand.”

Tustin’s base houses more than 500 youths ages 6 to 18, said Staff Sgt. Jeff Cerecke, the commanding officer’s liaison to the Boys & Girls Club. The starting salary for married Marines is $16,571; many with children take advantage of the base’s free housing.

On the 1,569-acre base, there is a pool, bowling alley and arcade, as well as handball courts, tennis courts and sports fields. Sometimes, kids shake a stick in the coin slots of arcade games for free plays or play “war,” a hide-and-seek variation. Some mornings, they make fun of Marines jogging in formation, three across, barking marching songs.

Or they watch Marine crash crews dousing practice helicopter fires of ignited jet fuel in an empty field. Even the smallest child gets to know the difference between the roar of F/A-18 fighter jets from the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station and the thunder of Tustin’s 21-ton Sea Stallions.

“We have a privilege,” said Ryan Mason, 14. “We could see [the military work] every day. Some people have to get a permit to come on base and see it.”

The downside is undeniable.

Friends can’t just drop by: They must be cleared and signed in at the guard gate by the MPs. Sometimes, the military police will stop their parents’ car so German shepherds can search it for drugs or contraband.

Military police report no problems enforcing the base’s traditional 10 p.m. curfew at a time when a debate over a national curfew is heating up.

“Can’t do nothing--[the MPs] are always bugging us,” said DeShawn Hank, 15, who wants to be a Marine pilot when he grows up.

There is also an edgy state of impermanence here. Most kids move every couple of years, leaving behind pets and best friends. They live with a lingering fear that their mother or father will be assigned to another Desert Storm.

And they are under intense pressure to stay out of trouble. Misconduct could be noted on their parents’ service records and mentioned by a commanding officer. (No major problems involving the base’s youth have been reported, Tustin officials said.)

The biggest problem?

“In all honesty? Boredom,” said Master Sgt. Richard Dewey, 38, who has three children on base.

“The kids fight the boredom because we don’t have a movie theater right around the corner. . . . The Boys & Girls Club is a place they can call their own.”

The Boys & Girls Club is housed in a small bunker-like building with the same government-issued look of the rest of the base. A Desert Storm banner is tacked to the wall; the furniture is worn and mismatched. In five rooms, youth ages 9 to 18 play video games on a big screen TV, work on computers and play pool or pingpong.

The bookshelf includes “The Divine Comedy” and “War and Remembrance.” In plastic foam cups on the window sill, the kids grow lettuce and tomatoes for the club’s pet iguanas, Ren and short-tailed Stumpy.

“There’s nothing to do on base except come here,” said Cody. “I like it ‘cause there are fun games to play. There’s always something to do. You barely even get bored.”

It’s not all fun and games for the roughly 20 regulars. Volunteer counselors and tutors drop by regularly. Club officials run interference with teachers and will try to ease the kids’ way by calling schools and nonprofit groups in their new community.

All families will leave in 1999, when the Tustin base is scheduled for closure, and transfer to Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego. Despite the scheduled closure, the Defense Department had approved the proposal to start the Tustin club because they liked the ideas put forth by local Boys & Girls Club officials.

Club director Oustad makes monthly reports on the club’s progress to base officials, who submit a semiannual report to the Defense Department.

At the club, the kids are just loud kids.

On base, reminders abound of a parent’s rank and the family’s place in the military strata. Youth identification cards include their mother or father’s rank. Guards salute riders in the family car based on a window sticker that identifies the rank of a parent--officers get a crisp salute, enlisted personnel get a casual wave-through. Officers live in tracts of single-family houses while enlisted Marines are either housed in barracks or condominium-like units.

The stifling culture fosters a tight fraternity among kids, said Oustad, 41.

“I tend to notice that they take care of each other more than other kids,” he said.

Last week, about a dozen club members played basketball in the wood-framed hangar that originally was built to house Navy blimps during World War II. The din of trash-talking young players was swallowed up by the cavernous expanse and the drone of helicopters landing outside. But none of the sneaker-clad kids paid attention to the Marines in steel-toed boots who tinkered with the insides of helicopters nearby.

The older boys played fast and hard, mostly ignoring the girls and little kids. DeShawn, 15, a tall, aggressive player, was often triple-teamed.

Cody didn’t get the ball often. Before he played, he took off the brace that stabilizes growth in his legs. Occasionally, he jumped into the air, his wrists snapping an imaginary ball as if he were making a Michael Jordan-like layup.

Finally, Cody got the ball. He shot, he missed.

DeShawn grabbed the rebound and started to turn on his heels to the opposite end of the court. But then he stopped and tossed the ball gently to Cody--on the opposing team.

Cody shot again. This time, he made it.