County’s Seabee Command Changes Hands

With the chime of a pipe and the formal reading of his final orders, Capt. James McConnell retired Wednesday as commanding officer of the Port Hueneme naval base, trading in a career defending the country for an uphill battle building public schools in Los Angeles.

Against a backdrop of uniformed Seabees, he handed the reins of the Port Hueneme Construction Battalion Center to Capt. James Cowell, his second in command.

McConnell, 47, will work under a three-year contract with Los Angeles Unified School District, where he faces the daunting task of building 85 schools in the next five years, hampered by a lack of available land and by potential sites tainted with industrial wastes. He said his time leading the Seabees, the naval corps called upon to build housing, airstrips and other support facilities at home and abroad, prepared him well for the job ahead.

“It’s the challenge, the fact that I’m doing something that I’ve trained for 26 years to do” that prompted him to take the new job, McConnell said before the ceremony. “It’s the opportunity to do something for the community.”

During the ceremony, McConnell told the 200 in attendance: “Some have said I’m taking on an impossible task. But, to quote the Seabees: ‘The difficult we do immediately. The impossible takes a little longer.’ ”

Transferred to the 10,000-person base in 1998 from a tour as public works officer in Naples, Italy, McConnell presided over the center through a difficult period that included the Alaska Airlines crash and the merger with a second naval base at Point Mugu to form Naval Base Ventura County.

“It was a laborious process that saved the Navy $6 million,” Rear Adm. Michael Johnson said of the merger. “In times of an electricity crisis and tight budgets, these kinds of savings are key.”

McConnell starts his $190,000-a-year civilian job Monday. He, wife Anni and son Max, 4, will be moving to San Marino. But he said the move won’t really change him.

“I’ll always be a Seabee,” he said.

Cowell, his replacement, has been in the Navy for 21 years, serving in several capacities at the base since arriving in 1998. The Florida native is a graduate of the University of Florida and MIT.

Cowell said he will immediately focus on improving Seabee logistics--”getting Seabees in the field the right stuff at the right time.”

He also said he planned to continue the base’s tradition of community involvement, focusing on such efforts as Food Share, the county’s largest food bank, and Boys & Girls Clubs.

He said he was up to the task of being the man in charge. “I’ll be responsible for everything they do--or fail to do.”