Oral History Program Kathy Mallis Interviewed by Alyssa Kammerman 23 April 2021 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Kathy Mallis Interviewed by Alyssa Kammerman 23 April 2021 Copyright © 2025 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Hill/DDO’95 oral history project documents the 1995 and 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process and its impact on Utah. In 1993, rumors started to circulate that Hill Air Force Base and Defense Depot Ogden (DDO) would be closed by the 1995 round of BRAC, causing state officials, local government, and local grassroots lobbying group, Hill/DDO’95, to spring into action to save Utah’s military installations from closure or realignment to other facilities. This project includes interviews from a wide range of players, from congressmen, state officials, members of Hill/DDO’95, and the civilian employees of Hill Air Force Base and (DDO). Their accounts describe the process of fighting for the base, the closure of DDO, the formation of the Utah Defense Alliance (UDA) and Military Installation Development Authority (MIDA) from the Hill/DDO’95 group, and their fight to save Hill Air Force Base all over again in 2005. Also discussed is the importance of the F-35 aircraft and the “Falcon Hill” Enhanced Use Lease project to the prosperity of Hill Air Force Base and military relations in Utah. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Mallis, Kathy, an oral history by Alyssa Kammerman, 23 April 2021, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Kathy Mallis. It was conducted on April 23, 2021 through Zoom. Mallis remembers her time at the Defense Depot Ogden as the Base Transition Coordinator in the aftermath of the 1995 Base Realignment and Closure. She discusses the process of closing the Depot, including working with the community, bringing in new businesses to occupy the old Depot buildings (Reuse Authority), and various efforts to assist former employees as they transitioned to new careers outside of DDO. The interviewer is Alyssa Kammerman. Also in the room is Sarah Langsdon. AK: Today is April 23, 2021. We are speaking with Kathy Mallis for the BRAC 1995 project. My name is Alyssa Kammerman, and I'll be conducting the interview, and with me is Sarah Langston. So, Kathy, just starting out, I wanted to ask you a little bit about your background working at the Tooele Army depot. It looks like you were the facility manager from 1993 to 1995. Could you tell me a little about that job? KM: Yeah, my career at Tooele was mostly the distribution side, the supply side. I moved up the ladder there and in 1993, I believe it was, the DOD made a really bad decision when they took all of this—They felt like DLA, Defense Logistics Agency, should be managing all distribution. So, they decided that all distribution, even at maintenance depots and airfields and every place to perform maintenance, they believed that the supply side of that, the distribution side of that, should belong to DLA. It was a bad decision because all of us in DOD did maintenance work. We had a specific process that allowed us to track the material all the way through 1 the process, into maintenance, out of maintenance. All of that. When DLA came into the picture, we lost all of that ability to track. We had to start issuing the materials. Once the material got issued to the maintenance side to be rebuilt, we lost track of it. So, all maintenance depots all over DOD argued that they made up their mind. That's what they wanted to do, so they did it. That's why I was called the facility manager. In 1993 we went under our distribution facility. The supply side of Tooele Army depot went under DDO. We were kind of just a tenant there after that change occurred. I became the facility manager for DDO at Tooele Army Depot. Our job was to do what we've always done, except we had to do it in a different way. AK: So, you were kind of under the umbrella of Defense Depot Ogden. Is that what you said? KM: At that point in time, yes. There was quite a feud going on between DDO and Defense Distribution West. DDO was kind of the asterisk in the sky and DLA had assigned three depots, three of their depots, to be distribution facilities. DDO was kind of standing out there, it was a political thing. So yes, at that point, we went under DDO. But during that process, we ended up belonging to Defense Distribution Facility West. AK: Okay. So, from what I understand, Defense Distribution Facility West, it's basically like a tenant of DDO, right? KM: No, they were actually—Well, they really didn't have anybody on site. They just managed us a little later on down the road. Not quite yet, but they ended up 2 managing us, and all of the personnel processes occurred at Defense Distribution Depot West. AK: I know in ‘93 Tooele Army Depot got closed down. Was that part of the transition process? KM: It was. When BRAC hit Tooele Army Depot, it was not a total closure. It was a mission change. They closed the supply mission, the DLA mission there, but they kept their maintenance mission. I'm sorry, not maintenance, their ammunition mission. So, the maintenance side on the supply side. We did things like engines, transmissions, generators, those kinds of things. That all was part of the closure, but the ammunition remained at Tooele, and that's why they're still open. AK: Okay, that makes sense. Interesting. I'm kind of interested because I know in— let's see what year was it? You were eventually hired on as the Base Transition Coordinator at Defense Depot Ogden after the ‘95 BRAC round. So, I was kind of curious, did you have that role at Tooele Army Depot at all? KM: No, I was the facility manager. Tooele Army Depot did assign a base transition coordinator for their own process. I worked closely with him, but no, I didn't do any of that type of work at Tooele. But it all intertwined. AK: Knowing the political climate and having seen Tooele Army Depot get closed down in spite of the renovations and stuff that it had, were you concerned about Defense Depot Ogden's chances in the ‘95 BRAC round? KM: I believed that they would be on the BRAC list. The reason I believed that was because of the political side of it all. DLA had assigned their three distribution depots, one on the East Coast, one on the West and one in the center, which 3 was in in Texas. They had to assign those and DDO—because of the politics of it all and some people that knew people at the headquarters, DLA headquarters— DDO hung out there. But when BRAC ‘95 was announced, I felt almost certain that DDO would be on the list. And they were. AK: Let's jump forward a little bit to when you came on at DDO as the Base Transition Coordinator. Tell me a little bit about what that position entailed? KM: My job was to be the ombudsman between the community of Ogden and other interested parties, and the DOD. What the DOD did in '95, it was a total different process from what they'd done before. They did a lot of statute changes. They wrote a lot of new statutes. So, our role in the '95 BRAC was, we had a deeper role. We had more of an ability to make decisions. We were assigned directly to the Department of Defense, the Secretary of Defense. So, we had a very high level of contact at the DOD. A lot of things changed between '93 and '95. But was that your question? I might have rambled a bit. AK: Yeah, that was my question. It sounds like that position was pretty extensive. One of the things I'd read in the newsletter was that “Base Transition Coordinators are one of the ways we are helping communities reinvest in themselves,” is what they said. So how did you help the Ogden community and surrounding communities kind of reinvest in themselves? KM: Mike Pavich and I—and it was wonderful working with Mike because he was a retired Air Force General. He had a ton of knowledge and he had been in maintenance processes in his career. I think he did fly jets for a while. But anyway, it was great having him. He and I were each other's contact. If I needed 4 help with the community, he went to the community and worked with them. We did it together also. But he was the point man for me in the community and I was the point person for him at the DOD. We worked together really well. It was interesting, a lot of those positions conflicted in some places. Memphis, for example. Memphis had a lot of conflict between their Base Transition Coordinator and their community, but ours was very good. We had a very good rapport and we worked well together and we did a lot together. AK: Did that include kind of helping with bringing new businesses into the DDO location? KM: Yes. One of the things that Mike and I did, the standard is that we had a really nice building on the base. It was a computer operating center and it was new. It was built for that process. The Standard-Examiner was very interested in moving into that building, but their hang up was they wanted to own the property. Initially, they wanted to own the property because they didn't trust the Department of Defense to give them a lease. They didn't trust them not to revoke it. At that point, we weren't able to sell them the property. But, this is important too, prior to BRAC '95 all property transferred to anyone out of the Department of Defense had to be sold at fair market value. They learned in ‘93 that was a bad decision, bad idea, and they had to change it. So, the Army Corps of Engineers, who manages all of the property in the DOD, came on board with us, and we had a really great engineer that worked with us. But anyway, that was important. 5 When we got to '95, they relaxed those rules, and that's where the reuse came in. If you could prove that you were hiring, you were going to hire people, and prove other things as a community, then we would pass the property to you at some level below fair market value, and a lot of it went for free. But anyway, with the Standard-Examiner, they were owned by some people in the south and they were very wary of the DOD. What we decided to do, I got with the Corps of Engineers and got with Mike, and we decided to ask for a 50-year lease for the Standard-Examiner. We thought maybe if we approached him with that idea, we could get them in the building. When the time came that we could transfer the property, we would do that. We would give it to them. So, I went to the Standard-Examiner’s office. Mike was out of town for some reason, so he didn't go. I went up there, I talked, they got us on the phone with the owners in the south. I talked to them and explained to them that this was the only way we could get it to them, but they were comfortable with the 50-year lease. That was the kite, and then they did move on to the depot, that's where they reside now. That's kind of the things that we did. We had to find unique, different ways to get this property past people to businesses that were interested. That's just a good example of what we did. AK: Yes, thank you. You mentioned working with Mike Pavich quite a bit. Was he still there as a representative of the Utah Defense Alliance, or was he hired on through the DOD to help with the transition as well? KM: He worked for the city, so—and to be honest with you, I'm not sure how they hired him. I believe they might have built a position for him in the city structure. 6 Well, cities all had a reuse authority. He was kind of the head of the reuse authority. Well, not really. He honestly, I believe they just built a position for him in the city because he really wasn't on the reuse authority, either. The reuse authority consisted of interested people, business people, the mayor, you know, people like that. So, I think they did build a position for him. But he was hired by the city. He didn't work for the Defense Department. AK: When you first got to DDO as a Base Transition Coordinator, what was kind of the mood at DDO? Was there are a lot of hostility towards anyone helping with the transition, or do you feel like people were pretty well resigned to it by the time you got there? KM: People were very nice and they were concerned, of course, about losing their jobs, but they were always. We didn't have any conflict with any of the employees. Things just moved along. We kept them well-informed and that was important. We hooked them up, made sure they were hooked up with the personnel, people at Defense Distribution West. Because I kept them up to date and informed them frequently about what was going on I think that helped us a lot. But we got along fine. You know, they knew it was going to happen, there wasn't anything they could do about it, so it was like they kind of made the best of it. AK: I had read in the newsletter, The Hub, that the DDO would put out that Colonel LeBaron had been doing these kind of mandatory workplace violence trainings. Was that a concern at the very beginning? Were you guys worried about maybe having disgruntled employees? 7 KM: Not really. I don't recall ever being concerned about that much. We just didn't get that vibe. People just went about doing their jobs. Anything we asked them to do, they did. At that point in time, the DOD was doing a lot of that type of training throughout the system. It was timely in our case. AK: Okay. I noticed that there were quite a few different programs you guys had in place to help with the workplace transfer and helping workers get hired on in other places. I'm just going to ask you about a couple of them if that's okay. The first one was, it looks like you had a Personal Outplacement Services Center, and I kind of want to ask a little bit about what that was? From what I read, it said that you use methods from the DLA, Defense Personnel Support Center, the Sacramento Army Depot and the Tooele Army Depot. I just want to know what some of those methods were and basically just what had proved most effective? KM: They kind of worked hand in hand with priority placement. It was called the PPP Program, Priority Placement Program. Because of it’s a statute, we were forced to follow the PPP process in reassigning people, getting jobs for them, that kind of thing. All of the employees were registered into these programs. The thing with DDO, it was really nice because we had a facility at Hill. Just like Tooele, Hill also had the same thing. They had a—DLA owed their distribution mission. Joe Robles was the facility manager for that. We were very lucky that we had that facility at Hill. It was a pretty big operation. Hill has a huge maintenance mission, so we were able to slide a ton of people over into the DLA process at Hill. Also, during these types of actions, they almost always offer an early out, which is they let you go out early and they offer a bonus, a $25,000 bonus to 8 people that were retirement age. They offered them the bonus to go. A lot of people took advantage of that. We had kind of an older workforce, so a lot of them took advantage of that, and then the rest of them, some went to different places. In the PPP they start out just looking at jobs within your local area and if they don't get anything in—I'm sure I'm not remembering the timeframes. But there's a certain timeframe, and if they don't get an offer, then they widen that so that they'll get additional facilities. We were able to place almost everyone over at Hill. There were a lot of people that wanted to go different places and they did to work. But for the most part, the people that wanted jobs got jobs and they were in the local area. There are other little government facilities, and that's the other thing. In the Priority Placement Program you also are able to look at other agencies. For instance, one of our people worked for the mapping agency. They belonged to the Interior Department. So, they looked at everything, Corps of Engineers and all of those. But our people, we were very fortunate to get most of them placed. AK: Just out of curiosity, what was the priority part of the Priority Placement Program? KM: What happens is people that were being displaced went to the top of the list. So, on any recruitments within the system, they went to the top of the list. For most jobs, you're supposed to be fully qualified. But under the PPP, you could get the job with minimal qualifications. So, it was a priority placement for those people. They just went to the top of the list. 9 AK: Was that unique to DDO or did that happen with a lot of different BRAC installations? I don't know if you know. KM: That was system wide, that was government wide. It was a process that was actually the recruitment and placement process for all of government work. Everybody did it the same way. So, if there were openings anywhere in a government job, they had to look at the priority placement first, and if they didn't hire from that, they had to give a really good reason why. But that was the unique qualification or something very unique that they couldn't find anybody for, they could pass over them. But anyway, that was government wide. AK: Would you tell me about the Interagency Career Transition Assistance Plan? KM: I can't tell you a lot about that. When I seen your questions, I went through some of my stuff. But it was also tied up in all of the personnel placement processes. I'm just not remembering exactly what that entailed. It was an interagency— obviously an interagency process where we were able to cross over into other agencies to place people. But I can't tell you a lot about that, we really didn't get involved in that much. AK: That's totally fine. I saw all these different terms and I was curious what the difference was between them. So, did that have to do a little bit with like interservice? I don't know if you remember. KM: Even above interservice. Interagency meant—I'm trying to think of some agencies for you. All government agencies. It went outside of DOD as well. It was all government, the IRS, for example. As a matter of fact, the IRS did take some of our people. So yeah, it's everyone in the government system. 10 AK: Thank you. Were there any other resources you had, especially for mental health supports or helping people with their resumes, things like that? KM: Yes, that’s what the PLS—the support center did. They had somebody available to people to help write resumes, help them understand the process, so they had some hands-on people. There were people available to help them with those things. AK: That included counseling for mental health support and stuff like that? KM: Yes, if there was a problem like that, they were definitely referred for treatment. AK: Were you a part of the DDO history book that was written during that time? KM: Oh, I'm thinking back. I had limited involvement in that, but I was aware of it, but because I was kind of new I didn't have a lot of involvement in that. AK: What was your involvement with it then? You said limited. KM: I don't know if I wrote anything for it. I don't recall doing that. I had a full-time, very busy job, so I don't recall being a part of that, doing much with that. Steve Tsukamoto, you may have heard, he's passed on now, but he was involved in doing that. AK: Yeah, that's okay. Like you said, you were incredibly busy. KM: Yeah, no. It was history for them, and I didn't really know a lot about their history. AK: Were you there for the closing ceremony in 1997? KM: Yes. AK: What do you remember of it? KM: The commander, the colonel that we had at that time—DLA's an interesting organization in that their military comes from all the services. So, I'd worked for a 11 Marine Colonel, the Navy Captain, which is the same level as an Army Colonel. I’d worked for an Army Colonel, several of those. At the time that we did the closure, the very formal part of the closure, we had a strange guy who was a colonel, but he decided that we needed bagpipes and they need to play Amazing Grace. He got Ben Lomond High School to come and do that for us. I remember being in the theater and I remember the bagpipes most of all. But there were speakers, and they did a little bit of some video stuff, but it was very nice. We invited dignitaries and local Ogden people. AK: Was the media there at all? KM: Oh yes, the media was, they were all there. This colonel was real media conscious. I think he was trying to further his career. He was interesting. AK: I'm curious, were you a part of the local kind of redevelopment? Well, let me reword that. Did you work with the local redevelopment authority on the reuse plan for DDO? KM: Yes, very much. Mike, of course, was kind of the head person on that process, but I went to all of their meetings. If there was anything that they needed me to do with the department, I did all of those things. I was totally integrated in the process. But as far as the reuse plan, we kind of guided them and helped them. When I left—I left I think in 1997, 1998 maybe, I moved on over to Hill—Mike kind of took over, and Mike and I would work together. He'd ask me questions. If didn't know the answer I would get it for him. Our Corps of Engineers representative tried to attend our meetings as well so that she knew what she might have to do 12 with the land reuse, those kind of things. But we stayed very integrated in their process. AK: How far did you get into like discussions with The Boyer Company that ended up taking over development and stuff? KM: Very little. Mike worked a lot with them. AK: Because most of that was post-1997, right? KM: Yeah, and by then I had moved on. We still had a lot of activity because we had to, of course, relay the property to people, and they had a lot of tenants on the base that we had to deal with. There's a lot of environmental stuff that has to be done during a closure. So, we did all that. They maintained a caretaker, a group on the depot for quite some time, probably through about 2000. Then that group moved over. Most of those people moved over to Hill, and Mike took the ball from that point. AK: You kind of talked about this a little bit earlier, but what were some of the main concerns of the surrounding community about DDO's closure and redevelopment? KM: DDO was very clean, so there wasn't a lot of environmental problems there. The other thing that was nice about DDO is—A lot of the bases during World War II and post-World War II were built, for example, Tooele Army Depot built buildings that were considered temporary. They were well built, but they were considered temporary. You know, wooden structures. Everything at DDO, almost everything at DDO was brick. They were very nice buildings that would be there for a long, long time. It was very attractive to people. Through the LRA, the Local 13 Redevelopment Authority, they worked with a lot of companies that were looking for property. They were able to get a lot of people interested and into the depot. So, Ogden was kind of a shining star in the scheme of things. There were a lot of depots that were horrible, that were contaminated and took a long time to get them cleaned up. But fortunately, DDO was very clean and well-maintained and permanent buildings that were attractive. For example, the headquarters at DDO was a beautiful brick building, the headquarters at Tooele Army Depot was a wooden structure, so that's kind of the difference. AK: Did you notice any kind of an economic dip right after DDO closed? KM: Actually, no. The people, economically, most people got jobs, people retired that wanted to. I don't recall really much economic impact at all. AK: It sounds like it was well-managed. Did you feel that at the time? KM: Oh yes, yeah, very well managed. SL: I want to know what did—because you said after you left DDO, you went to Hill. What did you do at Hill Air Force Base? KM: When I went to Hill, I was still working for DLA because we had that distribution facility over there. However, there was another program in the DOD that we all felt was a bad program, but they decided that they would have all the distribution. Their idea was that distribution was distribution, which it isn't, but DLA felt that way. The very high-level DOD people felt that way. So, when we got to Hill, DLA decided that they would compete our work. A-76, that was actually the statute. But we had to compete for our jobs, so what it did, it allowed the private sector to come in and literally compete with us for our jobs. 14 We had to have a group of people that did all the analyses for us. We were actually involved in the competition, and we did all of the work on the government side and I became the lead of that office. It took us years to do that process. We had several competitors out there that were interested, and ultimately we lost the mission and it went to a private contractor. Which was a disaster, by the way. SL: Did a lot of people who funded DDO who had transferred to Hill then lose their jobs? Or were they able to transfer to the private contractor? KM: Actually, a lot of people were able to go into the Air Force there, even though they felt like DLA should or DLA should own all the distribution. There was a lot of distribution type work on this Air Force side. So, they took a lot of people to help them do that kind of work. But ultimately, as I recall, we got everybody placed again. By then, some more people wanted to retire, so some people went out and it worked out quite well. I went to work for the Air Force. I don't know if you know anything about lean manufacturing, but that was my job. Like the work that I did at DDO as a base transition coordinator, I became the person that knew about lean manufacturing and I helped the Air Force get involved in those kinds of processes. So, I ended up with the Air Force as well. AK: Do you know about how many DDO employees went to work for Hill Air Force Base? KM: I'm not sure. Part of the problem, we weren't in control of the personnel system, so unless we ask for them, we don't have those numbers. I don't remember. 15 There were about 1,200 people on DDO. A good number retired. They either went out early or they were fully eligible and went. But there were 1,200—might have been 1,196, something around there—but they all basically got placed somewhere, the ones that stayed. I don't know the breakdown of how many retired, how many got placed. AK: Okay. I know you were working somewhere else by the time this happened, but did you see about when the companies started moving into Defense Depot? Was that a pretty quick turnaround? KM: Yes. I kind of stayed involved with Mike a little bit. We still had a skeleton caretaker crew out there for a while, so I kind of kept involved that way. But one of the biggest problems we had with the base was the roads weren't really conducive to big trucking companies, or big companies that had to ship using big trucks. That was kind of an issue. But people were able to turn it around very quickly. They were able to get that property moved over very quickly. It was probably one of the best closures in the system. Some places like Fort Ord for example, was a closure, they had a golf course, and it was a big fort and they covered several counties. Their property went into two counties. Now it's two counties. Couple of communities were outliers around that base, and they had a golf course. So, it was a contentious, really difficult closure, because one community wanted to be in charge and the other one wanted to be in charge and they didn't like each other. Memphis was horrible, it was a horrible one. But DDO was very good. It was probably one of the best ones, and it was probably one of the quickest to reuse the property. 16 AK: Why do you think the closure went so much more smoothly at DDO, or why do you think that it was a smoother transition? KM: I think the people, actually a lot of it was the people. In our area, I think people are just kinder for some reason here. We had Ogden City and a little bit of Weber County involved, but we had one group of people that we worked with that were cohesive and were in it together. We didn't have any warring communities or anything like that. Because of the way the depot was situated, we just had one group to deal with mostly. The depot wasn't huge. A lot of them are, Fort Ord was huge. Tooele army depot is. It made it easier for us to do it smoother, it was a lot cleaner. The depot was clean. For example, Tooele Army Depot had a facility that stored chemical munitions. Those facilities will never be able to be turned over to the community because of that, they can't get it clean enough. But with DDO, it was clean. It was funny, we knew of some people that knew where some paint was buried. People would go dig holes and dump paint in and kind of hide stuff like that. We had to do some research and we had to go to a lot of retired people to find out where these places were. There were a few of those, we found those. That's why, it was a perfect situation. DDO was just really one of the better situations, for sure. AK: I heard that you even found some old World War II mustard gas and stuff like that. Is that true? 17 KM: Yeah, we did, as a matter of fact. You just reminded me of that. We found some, I think it was a couple of rounds of something that contained mustard. I remember excavating that. That was the worst. We found out that some guy poured something, I can't remember what it was, something down the sink that he shouldn't have done, and we kind of made a decision not to make a big deal out of it. It was mercury, he poured mercury down the sink. Technically that would raise a red flag, but the facility manager and I felt like we were okay, so we didn't report it, we just moved on. AK: Was it an accident, or was it on purpose? KM: He did it on purpose. He poured it down the sink on purpose. Those little things like that the government just goes crazy over, when common sense tells you that, you know. We looked at the pipes. They took them apart and we looked at things, and we felt like we were okay. Otherwise, they would have come in and excavated that. We did make some of those kinds of decisions. We let the, it was a national group, motorhome association, we let them come on the depot and have a convention there. That was really fun for us. Gosh, I'm telling you my old stories. Our building—I still lived in Tooele, so our headquarters building was also the fire station. Of course, they had gone and moved on. I called it the Firehouse Hotel, because oftentimes I would just stay there overnight instead of driving home. The facility manager and I, we did stuff like that. We had a lot of latitude to make those kinds of decisions. AK: That’s awesome, I love those stories. 18 KM: Yeah, I had the Firehouse Hotel. It had showers and beds. I just brought my own bedding and I just kept it there. AK: Why not? You mentioned the road had some issues, did you guys have to widen any of the roads or anything? KM: I think eventually they did do some road widening, but they hadn't done anything like that when I left. AK: Okay, so when did we start seeing the advantages of the Defense Depot Ogden becoming Business Depot Ogden? KM: Very quickly. The Standard-Examiner moved over very quickly, right away. As businesses came along, we were pretty much able to get them into buildings. It just happened very quickly, much quicker than most places. You know, businesses were interested, they liked it. So, the LRA worked with them and got them in. Corps of Engineers had to do the paperwork, too. Under the new BRAC '95 laws we were able to sell for less than fair market value. There are a lot of things the community could do to get the price down of the property. Some properties went for free. We just passed them over. It was in the government's best interest to start to do that, because up until BRAC '93, they couldn't get rid of the property because it was still fair market value. But BRAC ’95, we’re able to make those kinds of deals with people, and some of them bought the property for free. I think a lot of DDO went that way. I don’t remember how much our lease was with the Standard-Examiner, but it was just a token amount. A 50-year lease. Then ultimately, when we finally 19 got the closure done and we're starting to transfer property, we did give that property to them, so they own that. AK: What do you think has been some of the biggest advantages to Ogden of having Business Depot Ogden? KM: Well, it was an opportunity for them to get more business into the area. That was the biggest thing, I think. It was attractive to people because it was well maintained. They were permanent, nice buildings. A couple of the things that happened with closures, we had a central steam plant that heated the buildings. A lot of people wanted to go to gas and independent heating and air conditioning. So, a lot of them had to do that kind of work on the areas that they took over. Some of them shared facilities. I think there would be two companies in one building, or three or whatever. They had to, you know, construct inside to break those down. There were a lot of different things that happened. But it moved along pretty rapidly. The IRS was on the depot, and this is kind of a funny little story. The IRS was on the depot, and they had a building and they were a tenant and they stayed there. They were still there when I left. I'm not sure if they're still there or not, but they were then. Most of the people that worked there were women, and they would call us and complain about the heat constantly. It was too cold and blah blah blah. Just went on constantly, and this facility manager was down there all the time. So, what we did is we got a thermostat, and it wasn't hooked to anything. We took it down there and put it on the wall so that they could move it up and down, and they never complained again. 20 AK: Power of suggestion. KM: Oh, you know, funny things like that happened. Those are the kind of memories I'll remember. AK: I love that. Thank you. Well, I just have one last question, unless there's any other memories you want to share. KM: No, I can't think of anything right off the bat. AK: Okay, perfect. I had read again in the newsletter from DDO that said "throughout the country, closed installations are proving there is life after base closure, and in many cases, the base has become the engine of economic growth for the local community." Would you say that kind of community resilience is the legacy of the BRAC rounds? KM: Yes. It happened because, again, DOD changed the rules. So, it did become a process that worked for companies and for the communities and for people to get those buildings reused. I think it was more that than anything. The laws changed and we were able to do more, and we were able to make decisions and do different little things that we'd never done before. As I think back, the Corps of Engineer representative, and the facility manager, and I, and Mike Pavich, we sat down a lot and brainstormed and made some decisions. I would run it up the flag sometimes if it needed to be. They would let us do it, or we just made the decision and did it. So, it was a really interesting process. It was a fun job. AK: Excellent. Well, thank you so much. SL: Thank you, Kathy, we appreciate it. KM: Oh, I hope I was able to tell you a little bit about it. 21 AK: Absolutely, yes. Really helpful. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time and willingness to answer all of our questions. 22