PERSPECTIVE : To Some, El Toro’s Future Can’t Compare to Its Past

With El Toro Marine Corps Air Station set to close at the end of the decade, government officials and nearby residents have focused their attention on the future of the valuable land once the military pulls out.

But a few retired Marines are concentrating instead on the past. Against difficult odds, they are fighting a plan to move the El Toro Command Museum out of Orange County.

“It seems like the American way to throw things away and forget about them,” said J.T. “Birdie” Bertrand, a retired colonel who lives in Newport Beach. The military “is part of our history--Orange County should preserve it.”

Under the Pentagon’s closure plan, the museum, considered one of the nation’s top military history centers, would move from its site on the base to Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego.

Members of Orange County’s feisty contingent of retired Marines argue that the plan would remove one of the last reminders of local military heritage, and they are rallying to save the museum.

Despite El Toro’s popular annual air shows and its central role in international conflicts ranging from World War II to Operation Desert Storm, preservationists fear that the base will fade from memory in much the same way as another once-famous Orange County airfield.

That facility, the Santa Ana Army Air Base in Costa Mesa, was one of the nation’s busiest military outposts during World War II, training more than 125,000 Army Air Corps cadets. It became part of pop culture in 1944 with the release of 20th Century Fox’s film “Winged Victory,” which was set at the base and starred Lee J. Cobb and Jeanne Crain. The base closed after the war, and the land was divided among the Orange County Fairgrounds, Orange Coast College, the Costa Mesa Civic Center and Costa Mesa High School.

“I would say 90% of people today don’t know it was ever there,” said Alvin Pinkley, a former Costa Mesa mayor who owned a drugstore near the base. “It’s a shame.”

The El Toro Command Museum’s exhibits offer a rare glimpse at the era of flyboys and war bonds. Opened in 1991, it has one of the nation’s best collections of military aviation memorabilia, from the torpedo bomber George Bush flew in World War II to a 1950s-era Soviet MIG-15.

In all, the museum has 30 restored aircraft as well as aviation books, photographs, miniatures, reference manuals and the world’s largest collection of Marine Corps patches, said Col. Tom O’Hara, the curator.

Retired Brig. Gen. Jay Hubbard, who helped found the museum, said it gives a sense and appreciation of how things were. “The U.S. Marine Corps and the Air Force belong to the people of this country,” he said. “They have a right to look at what we went through.”

He and other veterans express bitterness over what they perceive as a lack of concern for the past among those crafting a redevelopment plan for the 54-year-old base.

“Everyone wants to take a piece of El Toro,” Hubbard said. “I don’t think there is any room in their plans for a museum.”

County business leaders and government officials want to build a commercial airport there, along with residential and industrial developments.

Some veterans hope the plans will preserve the museum, as well as the El Toro Officers Club and other historic base buildings. They have lobbied Pentagon officials and tried to drum up support in veterans newsletters.

But so far, the federal government has shown little interest.

The base closure plan calls for the museum to move to Miramar along with air squadrons and more than 4,000 Marine personnel from both El Toro and the Tustin Marine Corps Air Station.

Curator O’Hara expressed surprise at the lack of private-sector interest in creating an aviation-themed attraction in Orange County, noting that private air museums elsewhere are thriving.

Santa Monica’s Museum of Flying, for example, serves as both a historical resource for aviation buffs and as a fashionable location for dining, private parties and conferences.

“They’ve combined history with a profit center,” O’Hara said.

Some preservationists are resigned to the museum’s move. But they hope some testament to Orange County’s rich military heritage will remain.

“A great amount of Marine Corps aviation history occurred at El Toro,” Bertrand said. “I would just like to see something that says something happened at El Toro.”