Battle for Base Solidifies

Buffalo News

Council’s ‘War Room’ Focuses Community Effort to Save Station

By Bill Michelmore
Niagara Bureau

The White House is not the only building with a war room.

In a secluded conference room in Niagara County, men and women huddle in anxious concentration as they strategize ways to save the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station.

“We call it the ‘War Room’ for good reason,” said Merrell Lane, chairman of the Niagara Military Affairs Council, a civilian organization fighting to get the air station removed from the base closure list. “We’re at war, fighting to save thousands of air base jobs and the battered Western New York economy.”

The council is in high gear now, anticipating the arrival this weekend of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission members who will ultimately decide the air base’s fate. Rallies in support of the base are planned for 2 p.m. Sunday at the Buffalo Bisons game in Dunn Tire Park and 11 a.m. Monday outside the UB Center for the Arts Mainstage Theater, where the BRAC Commission will start its hearing at 1 p.m.

Commissioners will inspect the base Monday morning. In the afternoon, they’ll conduct a public hearing on the base’s future at the University at Buffalo’s North campus.

The local council this week has experienced a constant flow of volunteers coming into the war room to pick up petitions or T-shirts to distribute in their neighborhoods. Businessmen with rolled-up sleeves sat at the table drawing up a game plan for Monday’s visit.

Round-table discussions in the War Room this week included a Power Point computer presentation on the merits of the base to be given to BRAC members by the military council’s chief spokesman, retired Air Force reservist Richard DeWitt. Commissioners also will hear from the area’s elected representatives, including Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Reps. Louise Slaughter, D-Fairport, and Tom Reynolds, R-Clarence.

“The BRAC people didn’t put us on the list,” said Lane. “The Department of Defense did that. But the BRAC people can save us.”

The flurry of activity began on May 13—known here as Black Friday—when the Pentagon recommended to the closure commission that the Niagara Falls base be shut down and its Air Force and National Guard aircraft be transferred to bases in Arkansas and Maine.

On May 16, the Military Affairs Council leased a room in the Vantage Center business complex on Lockport Road, less than a mile from the air base. It will keep the nerve center running until Sept. 8, when the final closure list is sent to President Bush. If the president approves it, the list goes to Congress, where the House and the Senate have 45 days to reject the entire list. If lawmakers do nothing, the list is automatically approved.

The military council’s regular membership of about 500 people has doubled in the past month. The War Room also is the hub for volunteers who field telephone calls, write letters to elected representatives, pick up petitions, make placards, organize rallies and deliver thousands of T-shirts bearing the slogan: “They fight for us. Let’s fight for them.”

“We get literally hundreds of phone calls a day from people wanting to help,” said Jennifer Overholt, the group’s executive assistant.h

Air Force veteran Michael P. Bocchicchia, 75, has handed out 5,000 petitions in his own door-to-door drive. The Town of Niagara retiresaid this is one of the most important battles of his life.

“This is a do-or-die effort,” he said. “For the base, and perhaps for me.”

As vehicles carrying the commissioners approach the base Monday, volunteers carrying printed placards and home-made signs will line the route and assemble outside the main gate. Then, they will move to the UB campus where the hearing is to be held.

“We expect to have 5,000 people in that parking lot,” Lane said.

The base is home to more than 1,500 full- and part-time Air Force reservists with the 914th Airlift Wing, and more than 800 full- and part-time National Guardsmen with the 107th Air Refueling Wing.

While the BRAC commissioners ponder the fate of the Niagara Falls base, the mission goes on, said Col. James Roberts, commander of the base and of the 914th Airlift Wing.

“Clearly, there are distractions,” he said, “but the men and women here are disciplined citizen airmen and they are using that discipline to keep focused on the mission.”

The Military Affairs Council, a group of business people, individuals, service clubs, local government officials and elected representatives, was formed after the base narrowly avoided being shut down in 1995.

“We dodged a huge bullet 10 years ago,” said Lane.

The base has a full-time work force of about 800.

“I’m confident we can win this,” said Lane, a Vietnam veteran.”