A Bittersweet Farewell to El Toro

In a ceremony that merged the nostalgic with the patriotic, more than 3,000 people gathered Friday for the official closing of El Toro Marine Corps Air Station--a “home for warriors,” in the words of one general, for more than a half century.

The event was mostly a formality. There weren’t enough Marines left assigned to the base Friday to muster up a parade, so two platoons from Miramar and one from Camp Pendleton presented the colors for the last time.

For the crowd, though, it did not matter. Even starchy military language--officially, it was a “disestablishment ceremony”--could not overcome the air of an informal reunion. Gray-haired men in old uniforms and service-logo T-shirts greeted one another like old family members, while younger families brought children for one last look.

Among the crowd were 11 Legion of Valor members: soldiers awarded the Medal of Honor, Distinguished Service Cross, Navy Cross or Air Force Cross for their actions in World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

In a poignant tribute to the Marines who passed through El Toro in its 57 years, assistant commandant Gen. Terrence R. Dake saluted “those who are heroes. Those who have defended this great nation and have been a part of Marine Corps Air Station, El Toro.”

Not all those heroes survived.

“Too many times we have been in the chapel for memorial services,” Dake told the crowd, acknowledging the core reality of war. “It is in the pride of their victories that we stand here today.”

Dake, a helicopter pilot who left from El Toro for the Vietnam War in 1968, described the base as glue binding together the men and women of the Marine Air Wing--almost all of whom have passed through El Toro.

“It matters not when we served here,” Dake said as a row of military flags and the stars and stripes snapped in the steady breeze. “There’s a kinship among us.”

The kinship extends to part of the surrounding community as well.

“My first pair of blue jeans are from the PX. They cost $4,” said Tonya Dalton, 42, of Mission Viejo, for whom the base was a personal touchstone even though she was from a nonmilitary family. “This was kind of the whole center of the community here.”

Dalton said that as a young girl she visited the base so often she felt as though she grew up there as much as in her Costa Mesa neighborhood. As an adult she returned regularly to visit friends and take in air shows.

“I went through the phase where I hung out at the officers’ club,” she said, laughing.

“We would always come out to the air shows. My mother and I would adopt a Marine, one of the out-of-towners with no family. We’d take him to dinner. Most of them were just kids, living a long way from home.”

Her mother, Peggy Dalton, moved to Costa Mesa from Texas just a few years after the base opened. Over the years, the family made the annual El Toro air shows a spring ritual.

Although Orange County’s landscape and character have changed over the years, El Toro has remained a point of constancy, 5th District County Supervisor Thomas W. Wilson told the crowd.

“The base is a part of Orange County” that brings back “fond memories of a county in transition,” he said.

Yet there is more transition to come. El Toro remains a key point of contention between Orange County officials who want to convert the base into an international airport and residents of the southern part of the county who are determined to kill the idea.

Local politics was all but invisible Friday, though, and the ceremony was more a lighthearted wake than a celebration.

The final official moments were marked by a World War II-era F4U Corsair’s symbolic touch-and-go landing, and a flyover by two F/A 18 Hornets.

“It was great,” Tonya Dalton said as the last two Hornets screeched past, then abruptly pulled up to make a nearly vertical climb into the clearing sky.

“Look,” she said, rubbing her left forearm. “Goose bumps.”