Rec Center Is on Its Last Lap
The Boeing Employee Recreational and Fitness Center in industrial Anaheim was anachronistic in a way that many good things seem to be--wonderfully out of time.
Sometimes, when the parent-to-child ratio was just right, and the swimming pools swelled, and the barbecue sizzled, and the softball diamonds rang with the din of aluminum bats, the place was positively Norman Rockwell.
It was Rockwellian in another way: Rockwell International ran it for 30 years, although North American Aviation built the low-slung center in 1962.
There were company picnics and retiree luncheons. There were the Ceramic Club, the Radio Club, the Photography Club, the Masonic Aerosquare Club, the Mineral Club. Even a Gun Club.
Ham radio operators--aided by towering antennas outside--conversed with the world and created phone patches so servicemen abroad could talk with their families. The center was built before dreams of jet-powered trips to the moon became as passe as sea monkeys.
“We had great times there,” said Ruben Dominguez, 75, a retired navigational systems mechanic from Orange.
But tonight the doors to the employee recreation center will close for the last time.
Boeing, which took over local operations from Rockwell in 1996, is selling the 20-acre property on Miraloma Avenue to another business.
In many ways, the closing of the recreational center mirrors the decline of aerospace in Southern California over the decades, as well as an era when employers and employees in general had more familial relations.
“There was a different view of corporate life then,” said Cynthia Kroll, a UC Berkeley economist who has studied the aerospace industry. “In many ways, the company provided a whole setting for a person’s life, not just a paycheck.”
Once, there were about 60,000 aerospace employees in Orange County; now there are about 15,000. Less able to rely on defense spending as a base for income, aerospace companies have become more concerned about competition, Kroll said.
“Companies had to change their strategies to survive,” Kroll said.
The aerospace giant will open a new recreation center in February, but it will be markedly different, with a tight, individual physical fitness focus. Times have changed, officials say.
“People are more into competing with themselves now,” said George Wiley, a retired Boeing employee and president of the company’s fitness board. “The kind of work we do, the kind of employees we seek and the kinds of wishes these employees have are all different from people of the generation I grew up with.”
A similar fitness center will open around the same time for Boeing employees in Huntington Beach, said Bill Izabal, human resources division director. Although these facilities will cost about $2 million to build, they will have a significantly lower overhead cost, Izabal said. It costs far less to maintain weight-lifting and Nautilus machines than softball diamonds and golf courses.
Although retired employees will still be allowed to use the new centers, it’s unclear whether children or other dependents will be allowed in, Izabal said.
One thing is clear, fitness board president Wiley said: “We won’t have the meetings for potluck dinners anymore.”
Boeing officials declined to name the buyer or the price, pending escrow, but sources said the buyer is in the surf-wear business.
The closure of the complex has angered many employees, some of whom made their feelings known in e-mail missives to higher-ups. Many others have expressed an eagerness to try out the new fitness center, Izabal said. But for the old center’s most steadfast visitors, there is great sadness.
Employees felt a special bond to the place, even giving part of the funding to build the spartan, beige-colored center by buying coffee and snacks from vending machines at the main plant a block away.
“We saw it as a significant employee benefit,” said David Christensen, 65, a retired aerospace engineer from Placentia. “We held it almost as a trust.”
The decor of the place says “yesterday.” There are old two-sided water fountains and the segmented, all-metal playground equipment--down to the small “push yourself” merry-go-round--that would be a rare sight in any city park today.
During the Lyndon B. Johnson administration, Dominguez taught his four children how to swim here in the early evening. Wife Josie, 73, would drop them off as she arrived for the second shift at the plant.
Actor John Wayne even brought his son to the place once, and Dominguez’s son Philip got to take on the “Duke’s” boy during a judo class. Daughter Liz later joined the company, and still works there in internal security.
“I took scuba diving lessons and umpire lessons here,” Dominguez said. “My children enjoyed the picnics and events, and learned a lot.”
Changes came, many of them as inevitable as rain. When the center was first built, men and women were segregated to certain days; men on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and women on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
“Around the 1970s, somebody said, ‘This is sort of dumb,”’ Christensen said. “There were some protests.”
Since then, the center has been open to both sexes all days.
But as the years and decades passed, and the number of aerospace workers diminished, children became ever a rarer sight around the center. Some clubs disappeared, and crab grass began to creep up through the basketball blacktop.
Of late, Boeing has been selling many properties or renting them out for commercial use, including this one. “This [center] was a gift to us, and they sold our gift for a big profit,” said Vern Wilson, 54, an engineer from Corona who retires in January. “Sounds like a typical big corporation.’
