Oral History Program Ernie Parada Interviewed by Alyssa Kammerman 22 February 2021 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Ernie Parada Interviewed by Alyssa Kammerman 22 February 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: Parada, Ernie, an oral history by Alyssa Kammerman, 22 February 2021, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Ernie Parada February 2021 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Ernie Parada. It was conducted on February 22, 2021 at Weber State University Stewart Library and concerns the 1995 Base Realignment and Closure. Parada discusses his role as the Deputy of Plans and Programs for McClellan Air Force Base during 1995 and the absorption of other air force base programs into Hill Air Force Base. Also discussed is how the closure of McClellan Air Force Base affected those who worked on the programs there. The interviewer is Alyssa Kammerman. Also in the room is Lorrie Rands. AK: Today is February 22, 2021. I am here with Ernie Parada speaking about the Base realignment and Closure 1995 project. My name is Alyssa Kammerman and I'll be conducting the interview. On the camera is Lorrie Rands. Let's start out with kind of a little bit of your experience at McClellan, especially what the BRAC 1995 round was like from your perspective? EP: So, from my perspective, I was a junior leader at the time. When they started doing the BRAC data gathering in ‘93 timeframe, I was actually chief acquisition, doing program management. I had a bunch of program managers working for me. Our job was to provide information about how many modifications we had, how many dollars were associated with those, when was the schedule and that kind of stuff. That was all rolled up to the base inputs, if you will. Then I progressed up in about the ‘95 timeframe, I moved over into the deputy plans and programs where all the BRAC activity essentially was collected. At that time, we kind of split the workload up into three different factions. Because when you think about BRAC and how it affected McClellan in particular, there was 1 essentially four different buckets, five if you count the missions that were going to be at the base, like the Coast Guard and stuff, they were staying there. One was the Tobyhanna workload, which was a space command and control workload that was directed to be move to the Army Depot at Tobyhanna. So, there was no competition or any of that kind of stuff. Then you had the privatization competition, which was all the rest of the workload, which ultimately Hill put the team together to win that. There was a program management transition with all supply chain for all the programs that we had, ranging from classified programs to A-10. Then it was all the staff that would actually be reduced in place because they wouldn't be transferring here. My job was to coordinate all of the program management transfers for all the programs on base. So that was A-10, F-111, F-117 classified programs, supply chain, command and control, all the programs. My responsibility was to put them together into an integrated schedule. All the programs moved at different times; you still had the mandated requirement to be off base by a certain time, but all of them would be in different positions. Either they had major modifications going on or major contract actions they were involved in, negotiating, or they were just set up to be received by the bases at different times. My job was basically to integrate all those different schedules. AK: You mentioned in your email to Guy that you had a big hand in suggesting that the A-10 and F-111 workload go to Hill Air Force Base. Would you tell me a little bit about that? 2 EP: Yes. As I was doing all the integration of the schedule, several of the platforms across the Air Force really didn't have a solidified decision about where they were going to go. If you looked at the other bases that were remaining, Hill had the F-16. We had A-10, F-111, F-117. We also had, what I'll say, the early days of the logistic support for the F-22 and F-35. Warner Robins had the F-15. So, there was some question in folks mind at the headquarters as to, "Well maybe we ought to move it to Warner Robins because they have the F-15." My argument was at the time, "Well if we're going to have centers of excellence," and I'll kind of explain that in one of the other questions. But if you look at bases and how they're set up, both depot maintenance, program management, and the supply chain, the fighter base was at Hill, so it only made sense for us to recommend that the F-117, the A-10, F-111, all of those platforms would move here so that you could do program management, supply chain, and depot maintenance at the same location for all the platforms. Ultimately you go through some arguments and those kinds of things, but that was a decision that was ultimately approved. AK: Backing up a little bit, it sounds like you were the deputy of plans and programs towards the end of the BRAC 95 process, is that correct? EP: Right. I was there ‘95, ‘96 and I left in ‘97, so I was there when we had the announcement and all the things that are associated with that. When I moved to Tinker, I didn't have anything to do with closure, per say, just work in B-2 sustainment and shutting down the Northrop Grumman plant in Palmdale and those kinds of things, moving depot work there. When I came here, my job was 3 to put the catcher's glove on, if you will. Earlier I was doing the planning for and integration of all the schedules for the various programs. When I came to Hill, I actually put the catcher's glove on and caught all of the space command and control programs that transitioned. It was about, and don't quote me, I think it was like 19 programs or something like that, ranging from atmospheric early warning to weather, all kinds of programs. It was about 500 people total, $500,000,000 in budget, something like that. Going by memory, which isn't all that good. AK: Tell me a little bit about the differences between planning the outgoing workload transition versus receiving it. I know that's probably a really generalized question. EP: Well, and it's very complicated because when you're planning workload to go to another center, and it didn't matter where it was going because we had programs that were transitioning all over the Air Force. Some went to Wright Pat, some went, to Hanscom Air Force Base, some went to Warner Robins, some went to Oklahoma City, some went to Hill. With all of those, you have to virtually plan everything from when you're going to shut down operations and back up to where are we today, how do we get the tech orders, all the engineering data, because all that stuff was either in microfiche or hard drawings. All that stuff had to be boxed up and moved to the gaining site. At the same time this is going on, you've got to manage all the tech orders that go, all the computers, all the engineering files for each one of those that have to transition. We're talking literally hundreds and hundreds of boxes of stuff. Every engineer has their own project. So, let's say you had a flight controls engineer. You got a whole set of files. Some were directed by each aircraft. So 4 structural engineers, I'll just use an example for the A-10: if a guy was a structural engineer, he might have a whole set of files on structural tests, what repairs had been done by tail number and all that stuff would have to be transitioned. There's a lot of things like that. At the same time, the losing base is looking at, "How do I reduce the workforce so that they're all gone by the time BRAC is supposed to take place?" So, you come up with programs that were early retirement, reduction in force, people quitting, transitioning, all that stuff has to be laid out and planned so that when the receiving base gets it, they know what's going to come, how much is going to come and when is it going to come. Not everybody transitioned. So somebody who was leaving, they might take an early out and then somebody else would have to take their job before the program actually transitioned. All that had to be laid in place. It's much more complicated than I'm making it sound. On the receiving end, when I got here, I'll just use this as an example, we had 26 people in the program office to accept all the LH workload (space command and control and intelligence programs). In two years, we went from 26 to 500. So, our planning on the receiving end is who's coming, what programs are coming, because there's a big difference between atmospheric early monitoring, ground theater air control, weather systems, all the different kinds of programs that were coming. They all came at different times, which is sort of a blessing in disguise. Then all the stock numbers that we manage, which were literally thousands of them, a lot of managers working on that at McClellan Air Force Base on this day, the next day, 5 they were being managed by somebody out at Hill so that all of those transitions system-wise, paperwork-wise, the procedures of when certain actions were taken, all that stuff had to be planned. At Hill, we had a couple of interesting things. Building 1239 is where essentially my office was going to be. So, if you look at the 1200s as you're kind of driving around the base and you look at the 1209, 19, 29, 39, and 1239 is where we had our director's office which was mine. It needed to be refurbished, the whole building, so we had to manage refurbishment of the building. We also had to plan for people to come, all the tech data and all the things that came with it: computers, fax machines, telephones, everything, copiers. All this stuff had to be planned in amongst the facility renovation, when people were coming. We tried to figure out a way that we could actually have people working at the losing base and at the gaining base so that we would be able to make sure that ultimately the warfighter was going to have support throughout this whole process, because at the end of the day, BRAC affected the gaining and losing base. The guys and gals that were getting support in the field, they didn't care about that. Their job was war fighting and we had to make sure that they were supported through this. So, the way that we worked things, making sure that both bases were doing their job as people were moving. We call it Permanent Change of Station, PCS. As people were moving, you have to give them time to come out and do house-hunting, time to close on a house, sell a house, all those personal things that you got to do, all mixed in with this. It was quite a deal. 6 AK: Were you in charge of overseeing all of that, then? Or did you have specific sections of those things that you—? EP: Well for the gaining organization, I had a responsibility for all of it. Yeah, so I was working with the losing center, I would go out there and talk with all the employees. Those that were not coming, you still had to talk to them about the importance of being able to transfer the mission while still supporting the warfighter and making sure that in a way that they were helpful in doing the job, as well as making sure that people coming into our organization knew that they would get trained because these were the experts. These folks were coming in from all over the world, not just Hill Air Force Base. They were coming in from Kelly, other stations, from the Pentagon. They were coming from everywhere, anywhere that we could hire people that were willing to come and take on this challenge. It was a constant effort to make sure that people knew that we cared about them on the losing end as well as the gaining end, because at the end of the day, it's the people who made it work. AK: I know that there had been previous base realignment and closures. Did either Base Realignment and Closure Commission, or the Air Force in general, have any kind of like training or paperwork or anything that helped you to have a seamless transition and keep the warfighters, you know, supplied with what they need? EP: Well, yes, they had experience from the other BRAC rounds, and so all of that was provided to us in a way. We knew the steps that had to be taken, but each step for each one of the locations might be different than what you actually had to 7 do for your own, depending on facilitization, hiring people, how the training was, the different kinds of systems that would be transitioned. Most of that stuff was laid up in a timeline that they wanted to see happen so that they could meet the BRAC mandate of closing a base by the mandated date on one hand, on the other hand, as the positions were rolling off the books at the closing center, that people were leaving as they had set up the schedule. There were top-level processes that had to be made, and they worked with you in a way that says, “Okay, if I've got to turn the switch off over here on the supply chain side on 1 June, then on 2 June it's switched over and everything went to Hill Air Force Base.” So systems all had to be changed in sequence, and the headquarters managed most of that stuff. But we had the planning responsibility of making sure that we knew what had to be done, and then we would recommend to the headquarters when we want them to turn the switches off and on. What we need to remember is it wasn't just Hill's stuff coming here, or I mean McClellan's stuff, it was the Kelly stuff coming. All that had to merge together. So there were organizations that were getting multiple workloads as it went through. I'm not discounting the depot maintenance stuff, but those were managed in a way, they had to do with the privatization contract award and the transition and all that kind of stuff. They had their own set of challenges, equipment, test equipment, tools, jigs, fixtures, all the things that they do. But on the other hand, they're more focused on maintaining the mandates for dates where those of us at the receiving center not only had to worry about the dates, but we had the bigger 8 challenge of making sure that people were coming here at the right time, getting trained and could actually do the mission. There's quite a bit of difference between the two. It really is. AK: How much—So with workload transition, obviously the equipment comes over, but how many people came over? Because I know you were mentioning maybe like June 1 you turn off the switch at McClellan. June 2 you turn it on at Hill Air Force Base, but to try to get people over that day would be crazy. So, was it like a few people went ahead and then the rest came? EP: Yes, we had a sequence of programs that were based on what made sense for each program. Let's say somebody, a program, was doing a major contractor work, well, you don't want to be transitioning while that's going on, so you waited until the negotiations of the contract were done, contract was awarded, and then there was a transition to the new organization as opposed to in between. You wouldn't want to do that, so we spread the programs out in such a way that matched program needs, support requirements, how the people would come over. We actually had authority to what I'll say is over-hire. An example is ten people there. We're going to end up with five people here because there was a mandated reduction in manpower due to BRAC savings. So, we knew we weren't going to be able to bring one for one. If you have ten over here and you're going to have five, they might give us the five over-hire so we can hire people. Then they'd work back and forth going, what we call TDY - Temporary Duty - to the 9 losing location so they could spend time with them. That way when we transition, at least we had five people, then the other five might move over in a PCS move. Every program had that responsibility. It didn't matter, like I say, whether it was the A-10 program that went to a different organization than mine or whether it was the classified programs that were moving into a different area, or whether it was the myriad of space command and control programs that were coming in. I want to say it took us almost two years from the time we got our first transition till we've completed it. Which seemed like a long time, but it really wasn't. We were, "moving and shaking," as I used to tell our folks. We were busy doing a lot of different things all at the same time. LR: Can I ask a question? AK: Oh, yeah, go for it, please do. LR: So, you talked about, seeing how we're talking about people, you said that the experts, the ones who really knew, they didn't transfer EP: Some did, it was a mixture. LR: Were a lot of them civilians who just weren't willing to move? Or were they military? EP: Most of the people that were in the LH organization were civilians, but there were some military. Usually what happens with the military is they'll get a PCS assignment and they'll go somewhere else. The civilians, essentially, you had a group that was ready to retire. There was a group that could retire before base closure and worked on a PCS here. There was a group that didn't want to move, so they went their own merry way, doing something different. Then there were 10 those that, "Hey, I think that's a good idea. Let's go ahead and move," for whatever reason they might have. It could have been the joy of another challenge or it could be "I want to continue my career until I had planned to retire," sort of thing. I moved because they were closing the base from underneath me and when we were talking about it as a family, I said, “Well, we have a choice. We can stay here,” My wife can continue doing what she's doing, and I could go find another job somewhere. But you have to remember that when you're in a defense business and you've been that way your whole life and all the bases are closed, then the defense business in that area actually goes away. So you have to take on a whole new career if you want to. But yeah, most of them were civilians. I don't know the exact number, but I would say somewhere in the neighborhood of 35% of the people transitioned with their programs some were in better shape than others. The ground theater, air control system, a lot of the people came over, so that program pretty much transferred intact and never skipped a beat. Others, there was only two or three people that came over and everybody else had to be trained. LR: Thank you. EP: You're welcome. AK: So when you mentioned that once the base closes then the defense business closes, does that mean any defense contractors that may have been out there, or like the private businesses, maybe like Northrop Grumman or whatever, did they also close up and move to the next base area? 11 EP: Yeah, I got to go back in my memory now, but I think most of them had their operations other than support contractors. So, if I'm a contractor that supports a specific system, they probably didn't move because, let's say Raytheon, they might have been at another site in Texas, for example, and they provide the same kind of service and didn't matter whether they were supporting McClellan or personnel at Hill. There were others that were support contractors that actually augmented the staff; engineers, tech writers and those kinds of folks. Many of them transitioned with the new workload as well. So it wasn't just the military, it wasn't just the civilians. There were support contractors as well. For a guy that was responsible for the receiving end of this, I welcomed them all because ultimately, in order to do the mission, the more that you had and understood the systems they were to manage, the better that support was going to be. So, yeah, it was a broad range. We had some military that transitioned but most of them, when they finished their two-year assignment or something, they were going to different locations. So we were able to bring in new military on this end, and so they were part of the trainee force as well. It was quite an integration of activities. AK: This might be an odd question, but with the reduction in force that was going on during BRAC, do you feel like, did a lot of those workers then transferred over to work for different private defense companies? EP: Some did, some didn't. I know quite a few folks actually just changed their career. A friend of mine, he actually went in, he had a law degree so he started doing lawyer work. He just got out of the business. Others I know went to work for other 12 I.T. companies in the area supporting hospitals and local communities and those kinds of things. Others went to other bases like up at Beale Air Force Base and supported there because they didn't have to move. But there weren't a lot of Department of Defense jobs left over. Those that decided to retire early and become a support contractor actually moved out here for a period of time. That's an interesting story in and of itself. Some people moved, bought a new home, some people moved, lived in an RV because they weren't going to stay here, they were going to go back home where their family was. But they had some that rented a house and five or six of them would live there, you know, and their families were back home, finishing school and those kinds of things. That's not unusual of any base that loses work. All of them have to go through the same thing. But I think most everybody just did a different career. AK: Okay, that's good to know. I was wondering if, as the military was shrinking, if some of those private defense contractor companies were growing because all of a sudden there's more workers without jobs, but it doesn't sound like it necessarily. EP: Well, see, you have to have a support contract at the gaining center. I mean, they could go to work for a company, but they usually have to have a contract that they can charge their time to. So as you're going through it, you don't get a whole lot more money to go buy contract support. You have to budget for it and get it approved. I mean, there was a little bit of flexibility, but not a lot, because the whole idea was when you have a number of jobs, let's say it's 15,000 jobs, and it includes civilian, military, contractor, what have you, when they transfer, you 13 don't get more at the other end. Most often you get less, because there's supposed to be a savings by consolidating workload. So you're not going to get more, usually. You may be able to fight for extra overhead funds to buy contractors to help bridge the gap, but then it's still pretty limited. AK: Okay. [To Lorrie] Do you have any other questions, too? LR: I do, but it can wait till later. It's an end question more than anything. AK: Okay, I just want to make sure I'm not ignoring you over here. LR: I'll make myself known. You know I will. AK: [To Ernie] You mentioned that your family, you were trying to decide if you should move your family with you, I'm assuming to Hill Air Force Base. Is that what you're talking about? EP: No, move anywhere. I mean, we raised our kids in the Sacramento area. Been 20 years there. My wife was in the banking industry and I was working for the government. Oldest boy was in college in Miami, Florida, and the youngest one was getting ready to graduate. So we had to make a decision. Do we stay? Figure out what we're going to do? Do I go, drag the wife with me? Do I drag the kids with me? What's the right timing? We decided that we would move. We'd wait until the youngest son graduated from high school. The oldest one was already in college. So that kind of became a decision point to us. On the other hand, I didn't want to have somebody force me into a job. "Force me" is probably not the right term to use. I wanted to have more control over the type of job that I would go to. I was 14 fortunate enough to be able to get an interview and a job selection working in the B-2 program. But we had to wait until my youngest son finished high school and he had to go make his decision. I said, "Well, you can come live with us." "I'm not going to Oklahoma." I said, "Okay." He ultimately went up to Seattle, Washington, to work with my brother doing concrete, which was a good move for him, because that's the kind of stuff he wanted to get into anyway. My other son stayed in Miami, and then my wife and I moved out and worked out there. AK: So, I'm just trying to make sure I'm clear. Did the B-2 program at Tinker realign to Hill? EP: No, B-2 program was transitioning from the acquisition phase into a sustainment phase. The B-2 had always been assigned to Tinker, as they had the B-2, the B1, and the B-52. So, when we talk about the Center of Excellence, just taking a couple of examples, fighters were at Hill, bombers were at Tinker, transport aircraft were at Robbins, engines at Tinker, landing gear at Hill, radars down at Robbins. So the whole idea for the B-2 program, it was transitioning and acquisitions overall. It was always going to be assigned to Tinker. It was not part of anything that had to do with BRAC at all. AK: Okay, so what brought you to Hill Air Force Base from Tinker? EP: Well, personally, we wanted to be closer to California because that's where our family was. So that was one driver. The other driver is, it was intriguing to me to 15 take on a job that I had never done before because I had never worked in the space command and control communications and intelligence business. I was always around aircraft for as long as I can remember, either as a mechanic all the way up to doing management. So, I figured, “Well, this is one way to really test whether I did a good job at integration planning, is to go to a gaining center and bring it home,” if you will. It was a challenge that I hadn't done before and a whole new group of systems. So that's kind of why I came. AK: Yeah, that's fair. EP: There were a lot of job opportunities. I mean, there was a lot of workload coming in, both maintenance as well as program management, so there were a ton of jobs that were available and it just kind of fit my desire to do something different. AK: Okay, so I kind of want to back up a little bit to get kind of a sense of the maybe more human/emotional side of workload transition. Back to McClellan a little bit, so as far as I understand, when the closure list first came out and it said that McClellan was most likely going to be on it, President Clinton flew in to California to reassure everyone that McClellan wasn't going to close. Is that correct? EP: Well [laughs], there were a couple of trips. The one I think that everybody points to is one that he did in 1996. The BRAC decision had already been made. He only had one of two options. He either accepted or rejected the list. That's the only option he had. He couldn't very well reject it because it would have affected everything across the United States. As I understand it, he reluctantly accepted it. What he did was he came out to try to tell the workforce that we're going to do everything we can to keep the jobs here at the base. 16 But if you really dig into that, he called it "Privatization." Privatization had an interesting twist because there wasn't any legislation and there weren't any internal processes on how to do that. That's good on the surface. The problem is when you talk about privatization, it was really only talking about the depot maintenance function. It didn't talk about any of the program management transfers. They were going to transfer to the bases that they were assigned to. That was never an option. So, when we talk about saving jobs, it was a very small number of jobs in comparison. The Tobyhanna workload was going to transition from McClellan to Tobyhanna and that decision was not going to be privatized or anything else like that, it was just going to be moved. So, we sort of have to be careful when we talk about that, because it only applies to a small piece. It didn't apply to everything. There was no way that they were going to keep everything on the base because that would have been counter to what the whole BRAC legislation was for. We just have to kind of keep that in mind. When you go talk to Don Cazel, he has a really good perspective on what's going on there, because at the time, he was a senior leader on base. He knows the depot maintenance workload that went to Tobyhanna pretty well, and he actually has a better idea, I think, on privatization. I was so focused on program management transfer, I got a little bit involved, but just too many things going on. You couldn't be an expert at all [laughs] on any of it. But yeah, so you have to sort of be careful when you talk about it, because he wasn't planning for everything. 17 AK: Okay. That is good to know. I didn't realize that. EP: Yeah, in fact, I'd have to look it up in my notes. But we're talking about 15,000 people on base and I think somewhere around 9,000 was involved in the depot maintenance. So, it's important to keep in mind, you know, that little aspect of it. AK: That's a decent chunk, but like you said, it's not the whole— EP: The workload that I was doing? Well, actually, when I was working in the A-10 and F-111 program, my program and the positions would have transferred. But since I became staff, the staff was all going to get cut. As the planner for all the programs to be transitioned, my position was going to be one of those that was going to be reduced. That's why I decided to be a little bit more proactive, search for something [laughs]. AK: Yeah, I don't blame you. EP: Well, because what happens is over time, the number of jobs that are available to you reduce. Well, if you make an earlier move. They closed in, what? 2001? I left in 1997, so. AK: In the timeline you gave, you said that when you heard about the announcement that McClellan was going to close, you were standing next to the new A-10, F111 system program managers deputy, and you both looked at each other and said, "Our job is tough enough, but it just became exponentially harder." Tell me a little bit about that. I mean, you kind of have a little, but would you expound on it? EP: Well that one is interesting because we were standing side by side and we had talked about it in the morning and said, "What do you think are the chances?" We 18 were just over coffee, shooting the bull, if you will. When they made the announcement, I looked at him and I said, "Well, Greg, let's do this: let's make an agreement right now. I'm going to take care of the workforce and you're going to take care of the warfighter. So, whatever the warfighter conferences and all that kind of stuff, you're going to go do that job. I'm going to take care of all the transitions and all the people issues." That was our conversation right afterwards. We sort of knew we were going to be on that list just because we had dodged the bullet so many times and we figured you're not going to dodge it anymore. Everybody didn't share that view, of course. I think we were a little bit more realistic than anything else. So that's how we split up the job essentially from there on. I took the people, transitioned, did all the work related to that, including working with the receiving folks here at Hill. That's actually when I met Vicky McCall. That job was trying to figure out, "Okay, we're coming. What does that mean?" You think about it, you got a bunch of people who have to make a decision one way or the other. Can you enhance their decision to say yes by giving them a lot of information about where they're going to? It didn't really matter what base, you know, the same kind of thing would be required. Between me and Vicky, we worked on how to get information and data on everything; churches, schools, medical, you name it. There's a big difference between the military and civilians. Civilians move, there's not a base. They don't live in base housing. They don't go and use the medical facilities. They don't use the base exchange. They don't go to the grocery store. They don't use any of 19 those facilities. They have to go live out in the community, figure out where they want to live. Do they have kids? Don't they have kids? What's their religion? Where's their hairdresser? Where's the doctor? This is probably harder on I think the women than it is on guys because you got a lot more things to think about when you're moving. Guys just [scoffs and waves hand dismissively]. You go, "I just go to that barbershop and I'm done" [laughs]. AK: [laughs] "I cut my own hair!" EP: [laughs] Yeah. I think it's a lot harder on women to do that. Then you have to be able to integrate in the community as you're going. It's every place that I went to, and of course I went from McClellan to Tinker to Hill to DC to Boston and back to Hill. Every place I went, you have to do the same thing. You have to get a house. Many times you get an apartment first, find a house. Sometimes it works where you can move right into a house, but that doesn't happen very often. At least it didn't for me. But you got to figure out where are you going to grocery shop. I mean, all that stuff you got to do, because you're expected to arrive on day one and start working. It's quite a challenge. AK: Were you a part of helping plan that job fair that Hill did? EP: Oh, I wasn't responsible for the job fair, if you will. Frankly, I didn't go to it because I had already made the decision with the family that we were going to get a job doing something else. I didn't know what it was at the time, but no reason to go do a job fair on the base when I wasn't going to stay. I really didn't go. But there was a mixture of views. Some thought it went very well. Others 20 didn't think it went very well because it didn't answer a question that they might have had somewhere along the way. But I'll give them credit. They did something. People who were going to hang in the area, if they decided they wanted to go do something different, they wanted to go find a job or go to school, get a degree to do something different. We'll say they were program manager or something and they wanted to be an electronic engineer. They could go back to school and have some kind of transition education, you know, cover for them. For me, I didn't go. No sense wasting my time, I had other things to do. I sort of knew what my future was going to be anyway. I just didn't know where. AK: So, you didn't go to the job fair, but you said that you did work with Vickie McCall to kind of come up with some of those important things to have? EP: Right, right. What we did, we figured out, okay, what are people going to be interested in? They're going to be interested in schools. They're going to be interested in real estate. They're going to be interested in places to do vacation. They're going to be interested in churches. You know, all the things that people are looking to go find the information on. We had VHS tapes and we put them in cubicles and people could check out the reading materials. They could go in there, spend time during lunch or whatever. Try to be as flexible as we could with folks so that they could go in and spend a little time. Even had a checkout process where they could check it out and take it home and talk it over with their family. 21 That helped a lot, because any time you're going to move, and as a civilian, most of them don't move. They work at that base. They start there and they retire. Very seldom do they move, a very small percentage. But when you're taking a large percentage of folks that are going to move, it's fearful, it's scary. You know, "Where do I go? What's the difference between a house in Layton and a house in North Ogden?" As an example, I mean, you don't know anything about the area. You have people who love stream fishing in California. Well, do I have stream fishing available in Utah? We tried to answer all of those kinds of questions for them to make it a little easier for the transition. AK: Was there a little bit of maybe also a concern with like a culture difference for some of the California workers moving to Utah? EP: Yeah, but that culture difference, I think, was the same no matter where somebody was moving to. If you move to Warner Robins, it's a different culture than what you have in California. If you move to Hill, it's a different culture. It's not bad. It's just different. I moved to Oklahoma and it was different there. When I moved to D.C., it was different. When I moved to Boston, it was really different. I enjoyed all the moves for different reasons. I think there was a concern from folks no matter where they went. So, the idea was to give them as much information about what's available, what's not available, you know, those kinds of things, so that they would be able to make informed decisions. AK: I mainly ask because I've had a couple of interviewees tell me that they felt like Utah and Ogden at the time was more of an insular culture than it is now, because now we have social media and we have ways to connect a lot more 22 than before. They felt like Utah, and especially Ogden, was kind of isolated from a lot of the other bases, so I was curious if that was part of your perspective as well. EP: Well, I think every base is isolated. Having been at three of them, four if you take Hanscom, you get wrapped up in the work that you're doing, the community that you're supporting and those kinds of things. You almost have to work at how to integrate and how to cooperate with other bases. Their mission is different. I mean, there's a big difference between working on a C-5 at Warner Robbins and an F-16 at Hill or a B-2 at Tinker, but it's just different. So consequently, you're in your own little world and so you have to force yourself to integrate. When I came here to Hill, and I did it twice, each time I got wrapped up in the work that I was doing, and I had to force myself to integrate with other folks. I think the advantage I had is, as a senior leader, it forces you to integrate with other folks, because if I'm working on, just for example, the A-10 and I need engine support, well guess where I'm going to go? I'm going to go to Tinker for engine support. Prior to that, it was at Kelly. They managed the engine for the A10. So, as a senior leader, you're forced more to integrate and cooperate and do those things. But when you're in a program office, you're busy supporting the warfighter, getting the work done, working modifications that might not even be associated with anybody else. I think that's one of the reasons why the cultures are so locked up in each area. If I'm working, let's say, on an F-16 over here, I'm not really going to coordinate with somebody that's working a B-1 at Tinker, or a C-5 at Warner 23 Robbins. The work is just different. There's projects that you might do like, how do you depaint an airplane? Well, that might be something you would work. But, by and large, no. If I'm here and let's say I like motorcycle riding, well, I'm going to concentrate on motorcycle riding here in Utah. I'm not going to worry about what's going on in Oklahoma. Everybody has a different way of dealing with it. Some come with a very closed mind. Some come with a very open mind, and you have to learn the employees no matter where you are. I think I had an advantage, mainly because I was building a brand new organization. There wasn't a lot of people that already had built the workforce culture and everybody knew the systems inside and out, and they knew the contractors. That wasn't the case. Everybody was learning. I think it helped open the doors a little bit more for people to be a little bit more accepting and those kinds of things. So, I might have a different experience than, say, somebody that actually took a job in an F-16 program office that had been here for years, and they're trying to integrate with whatever that group is. I'm not saying it's good or bad, it's just different. AK: That makes sense. You had mentioned some concerns with suicide, and I was wondering what kinds of mental health resources were available to the workers in the military at that time? EP: I think the short answer is not enough. First off, it's extremely difficult to accept that your base is going to close. You have a mixture of folks, most of which were very upset that they were on the list, some of which felt like they might have 24 failed in their job performance. When you're forced with having to make a life changing decision, some people didn't deal with it very well. Frankly, I don't think they had the resiliency training that's available today back then. You'd get your briefings, the headquarters would come down and send you a 45-page briefing, "This is what to look for, this is who you talk to" and all that. But at the end of the day, when you look people in the eye, it's not the same. It really forces people to work together, watching each individual employee to make sure that they're not going off the deep end. It's hard. We had another issue, I think, that a lot of people didn't think about. I know we in leadership didn't—I don't know if we consciously thought about it or anything, but when you're trying to figure out what you're going to do, your mind wanders. I lost an employee, he got killed in a car accident coming to work. Was going to come to a meeting with me. I remember this individual, we would talk about, “What's your next step? What do you plan on doing?” You know, in your mind, you're sitting there going, “Was he thinking about something else besides driving?” People at work, sometimes performance dropped for individuals because they were at a critical time when they had to think about, "What do I do now?" It's different than the receiving bases. Receiving bases, you know, “I'm not closing." But those folks, I mean, every person had to go through that somehow or other. Ultimately, I don't think there was enough. In our organization, I actually brought this course called Increasing Human Effectiveness. The whole idea behind that was, “How do I accept information? How do I make those decisions 25 and can I control how I react to those decisions?” I brought that to the A-10, F111 program office when we first got notified, and it helped people get through the initial phases of, "Oh, this isn’t because I didn't do my job." But then we brought it as a standard tool for the entire McClellan Air Force base. I brought it here to Hill Air Force Base when we stood up the L.H. organization, because I felt like we were having so many different people coming in, I got to get them enthused about doing this work. The only way you can do that is you either have to give them some kind of tools and training or you let them do it on their own. I'm convinced you can't do it on your own, you need help, and so the short answer is, no, they didn't. But we figured something out at McClellan and actually brought it to Hill twice: Once when we stood up L.H., then once when we had a major reorganization where we stood up the wings. That was a big one. AK: That's really cool. Do you have any other questions before we kind of switch gears? LR: I'll just ask this question. I got to thinking about how, well especially at Hill, I've noticed that the base supports the National Guard in the area. So how did the closing of McClellan affect the National Guard, if at all? You might not know the answer, but I'm just curious. EP: Well, yeah, that's a good question. Most of the National Guard units in there weren't affected. Their locations weren't on the base. The Coast Guard unit that was there, because it was Coast Guard and not part of the Air Force, it stayed right there and they operated out of the base. They had the defense, I'm going to 26 get this wrong, but it was the Defense Electronics Management Agency or whatever. It was an idea a bit on the far side of the base. It was Air Force to begin with, and then they changed it to Defense Electronics whatever. But the whole idea there was these guys would develop organic ways of developing new electronics: software tools, electronic tools, and stuff like that. Well, they stayed there. [Talking to self] Defense Electronic—Well anyway, DMEA. Most of the other places, they had the base exchange and all that stayed there. It was changed to a defense organization. But I don't think the guard was really impacted, at least that I recall. AK: That's a good question. I hadn't even thought of that. That's a good point. EP: When you go through base closure, everything in that base has to have a distribution of some sort. Doesn't matter what it is. I talk about the program management because that's the one I was really deeply involved in. But you get involved with “Okay, do you have a clinic there? Do I close the Air Force clinic or do I make it, say, a Navy clinic?" Everything that was on that base had to be, it had to have some sort of a decision. So, some stay right there. The mission stayed there, maybe a contractor bought the capability. Everything gets impacted one way or the other. Then because it was an Air Force base, then you have to have certain cleanup procedures and all that kind of stuff for any potential environmental things that have to be cleared up. All that has to be taken into account. It's not an easy thing to do. Every base that closes, even if it's a realignment, it has to go through the same thing. 27 AK: Do you feel like a lot of that cleanup caused some maybe unforeseen expenses for the government? EP: I think so. I didn't really study the environmental impacts and cleanup and all that kind of stuff. I do know that there were some things that had to have clean up. The C-121, back in the days when they were doing nuclear testing and all that kind of stuff, they would actually go out and take air samples. Come to find out, they had essentially a dump on the west side of the base. Well, when they went to do some of the environmental cleanup, they found these things and that created something I think they weren't planning on. But I don't know, I don't want to talk out of turn there. That's just something that you hear about. But I remember when I was driving over there to check it out, all this whole area was cordoned off. You couldn't even get close to it. So, I think every time you have a base closure like that, you find something that was not planned on. I don't think there's anything terrible about it. I mean, didn't find bombs and all that kind of stuff. Sometimes you won't even find it until you tear down a building and then you go and you do the soil samples and all that kind of stuff and you dig a little deeper, and dig a little deeper until you get clear soil. But by and large, you could go to McClellan Park now and many of the buildings are still there. Some have community offices and contractors that are in there and all that kind of stuff—which is the whole idea of BRAC as mission moves out, some other kind of jobs move in to replace. I know some of the shelter repairs, they do those right on base in the same facilities that we were 28 doing them way back when. Don will know that stuff, because he was over there in charge of that workload prior to his last assignment there. AK: This is a little bit of a loaded question I guess, but do you feel like BRAC did end up saving money as was originally hoped? EP: Without looking at the figures, I don't know. I have to believe yes, it did, because when you look at consolidating workload, there's certain efficiencies by being able to do that. I mean, I can move somebody from an A-10 to an F-16 to an F22, even though the technology is a little different. If I'm a flight controls engineer, I can do flight control engineering someplace else, so I think there are some efficiencies by doing that. You automatically have some savings because you're going to cut a lot of the overhead. You don't need another commander. You don't need a lot of the staff support. If I've got plans and programs at Hill, I don't need to bring plans and programs from McClellan. So, there is some savings there. Those on depot maintenance side, I think there were savings because there was a competition out there. I'm sure that there's some savings because they had to sharpen the pencil to be able to win the workload. Let's say, if you're into de-painting an F-16 and now you put an A-10 in there, while you're depainting you don't have to have necessarily a new facility for it. In some cases you do because the platform's different. You would do the same kind of depainting, if you will, for an F-22 or an F-35. I have to believe that there were some savings. I just don't know what they are. AK: That's a complicated question. I feel like everybody has a little bit of a different answer to that, just depending on their experience. 29 EP: Well, it depends on clean up. It depends on the cost of moving, how many programs were canceled, what transferred. It's really complex. It's not as easy as the legislation likes to make it out to be. Then the cost of closing something in 1995 is different than it is in 2000. Five years makes a big difference, so it's kind of hard to say. Some costs were not visible because, for example, the Coast Guard, it stayed there. But then you have to ask the question, “Who runs the tower? Do they have to do their own or does the Sacramento Tower take over?” There's a lot of things that you never really tell. The cost of moving people is pretty expensive, because for example, if you can't sell your house because the fair market value of your home has gone down because of closure, you may lose money in the house. You might have to have the government buy it in order to be able to hold on to it and sell it because you're gone someplace. So, it's really hard to tell. If you look at all the different reports, you'll get all kinds of different opinions. What they thought they were going to gain may not have been the true savings. But I think at the end of the day, there probably was savings. I'd have to go do research on it. But I don't know. A lot of people, GAO report, the Government Accounting Office, they do all kinds of reports on what they thought was going to be the savings and those kinds of things, and [shrugs then laughs]. AK: Fair enough. No, I get it. What do you remember—So I was doing a little research and I read about something called the Core Plus Program. EP: Right. 30 AK: Did you know anything about that? Can you tell me anything about that? EP: Well, that's more complicated than the question. AK: Okay [laughs]. EP: Core Plus is you figure out how much workload is the core workload that you need to maintain the expertise. Then there's, "Okay, how much can I increase that for wartime requirements?" So, let's use the landing gear as an example, the C-5 landing gear. Let's say my peacetime repair is ten. Well, if I'm going to go into a wartime setting and I'm going to have to fly C-5’s all over the world and I'm going to double the flying hours, how much growth capacity do I have in it? You can handle that multiple ways. You have the workforce that's available to work overtime in those kinds of things, or you can contract out whatever. But Core Plus, the whole idea was, "Okay, I've got engines at Tinker, so what kind of capability do I have there? I have landing gear here, I have A-10s here, F-16. Okay, if I'm running thirty aircraft through, how fast can I get those in? How much workload can I take? How much hangar space? How much tooling?" There's a calculation as to what that core workload is, then how much I can expand it if I'm in a wartime scenario. The reason why I say it's complicated, because just calculating the core and plus is one thing. But then you have another concept, which is U.S. code, I think it's 2466, which is how much work load has to be done organically. Right now it's 50/50. So, that says for all the depot maintenance dollars that go in the system, fifty percent has to be done in the organic depots. Doesn't matter which one, it has to be in the depots. The other 50 can be contract. That used to be 70 31 percent and it has changed over the years as different types of programs and different officials came in and said, "Hey, that's too much organic. We really need to have a stronger industrial base. Let's reduce the organic number and increase the contract number." So, Core Plus comes in because if I'm going to—I'll use an example: if I'm going to have a core capability of doing F-16 work and what guarantees me I'm going to have that kind of capability as F-16 retires? What you do is you bring in workload for the new systems, the F-22 and the F-35, and then you maintain your core capability of being able to do aircraft repair. Same thing with landing gear. As a weapon system goes out, I want to bring in new landing gear. When I was working the B-2 program, we were bringing in B-2 landing gear workload into Hill Air Force Base, where it's called depot maintenance standard. We were bringing in engines into Tinker, we were bringing radar systems into Warner Robbins. So, Core Plus tells you, “What kind of center of excellence am I going to have at a location? And then ultimately, how much workload can I do there and how much surge capacity can I do in a wartime setting?” But it's a lot more complicated than I'm saying. It's really tough because I was usually on the outside looking in, and I was in program management most of my life. I started in depot maintenance, but my job was to manage programs. So if I have, let's say I want to do repairs on generators, well, I'm going to want to have the best price I can for that repair. Sometimes, having to maintain organic workload is a little bit more expensive than it is contracted. It just depends. I was usually on the other side of that 32 equation trying to figure out how I could take a dollar that I was given, taxpayer money, and make that dollar stretch as far as I could go. So sometimes it put me crossways with the corps in a center of excellence and 50/50 [laughs]. That's just part of the business. AK: That helps a lot. Thank you. Because I keep reading about that, and I was like, “Okay, I don't understand.” EP: I actually, I can send some stuff to you that would kind of explain it, because in here I put some information, had to do with for example, the U.S. code was 2466. It today has 50/50, and you have to report it through DOD. Each service has to go through, AFMC has to do it by each base. As you collect all that information, the secretary of defense has to confirm to Congress that he's got a 50/50 split and you only have a two percent wiggle room, and if you're going to breach that, then you have to notify Congress and then you have to tell them what you're going to do, essentially is what it is. But when it started in 1982, it was 70 percent and changed over the years. I can give you a couple of really good examples, but I won't [laughs]. AK: No, that's good to know. I'm trying to think of what other questions I have. I know I have a lot more, so I'm just trying to think of where to go from here. This is kind of going back again, and I apologize for that. I'm just a little curious about the community efforts to fight for McClellan before the announcement, of course, happened. Because I know Hill Air Force Base takes pride in their community efforts and the way that they kind of showed up to show the importance of the base to them. But I mean, in the end, really, there was an algorithm, I know, that 33 kind of showed base capability in certain areas and stuff. What was the community support like during BRAC 1995 at McClellan, and how do you think that it helped? EP: Well, I'll just be honest, I wasn't really in a senior enough position to be involved in those things near as much as I was when I came here. All I can tell you from the outside looking in, I know our local and national congressional leaders and the governor all worked very well with the base leadership. The story goes, when Ann Rudin, which was the mayor of Sacramento prior to the 1993 BRAC, she made the statement and says, "I really don't need military bases here." The two things that happened: the Army depot closed, and several other facilities closed in the area. That kind of opened the door for all the other politicians across the other bases to say, "Okay, you know, we'll protect ours. She doesn't care about it." I'm making it probably sound more negative than it needs to be. But everybody will point to that point in time that says, “If the mayor of the area doesn't think it's that important, then it's harder for the congressional leadership to fight that.” But that doesn't mean that folks didn't have the community relations and those kinds of things because they did. I just wasn't involved in it near as much as when I came here. I was involved with the Utah Defense Alliance. I was involved in the Military Affairs Committee and a mixture of, you know, they had the LOGSTAR program then that I was involved in here. Essentially what that does is it takes senior leaders from the base and local community leaders and we were partnered up with somebody. The idea is for us to tell them what we do in our 34 business and for them to tell us what they do in their business, which gets down into the community level where you're dealing with people who run businesses like restaurants. Somebody might be an administrator for a local educational district and those kinds of things, or a local politician, mayor or something like that. It allows us to build relationships within the community, involvement that way. Outside of the UDA, in the military affairs, which is a little bit more focused on defense mission, how do we save the base? How do we keep it? How do we bring in more workload? Who do we have to work with? How do we do that, you know, kind of stuff? That was my job, more or less. I did LOGSTAR, I did all those things, but it was more or less making sure that my organization was meeting their mission to the best of their capability. If you can perform well, then you can fight off other attacks with different kinds of programs. There's always a new program to be more efficient. We're fortunate we don't have any current BRAC legislation but that's not to say there won't be over time. AK: So, you say it was log star? EP: LOGSTAR, yeah. AK: Does that stand for something? EP: I used to know what it was. It's called the Logistics, something. I might have to go do a little research on that one there. But essentially it was more of a social environment where we'd actually bring our LOGSTARs on the base and then we would tour them around the base so they could see all the different kind of capabilities that we had, because Hill is unique in a lot of ways. Of course, I could 35 say the same when I was at Tinker, I could say the same thing when I was— Every base has its unique things, but by the same token, the local community needs to understand what happens out there. What are we responsible for, and how do we do our business? Then it's our job to understand what the community interests are. So, it was a good program. Of course the social, but then learning environment too. AK: How does that help with, you know, in order to have those relationships with the community? How does that help the base and the community? EP: Well, if you think about it, everybody that work outside the base, whether they own a gas station or a restaurant or schools, gyms, you name it, for every person that's on the base, it creates five other jobs. So, the better that you understand how important that—and it doesn't have to be the base, because it could be Hewlett-Packard, it could be a major supplier somewhere. It doesn't have to be us. But because it's a base and you think about it, you build houses because people got to live somewhere. You build stores, you have doctors. You have all these people that are supporting the local community and the base. Well, if that base is no longer there, what happens to the businesses? They go away. So, the better that both sides understand how important they are to each other, the better that they can support each other. AK: That makes sense, and that helps with defending against future BRACs? EP: Right, and that's the value of having the Utah Defense Alliance, because it takes people from all different kinds of community-type jobs, plus a couple of retired folks that understand the business inside the Beltway, how it works, how the 36 legislation is made and all that kind of stuff. Then they can go work on behalf of the base, either with the state, national representatives, and maybe even with the major commands that might have decisions that might impact the base. Vicki has a lot of background in that area and she's been great for the base nationally as well as locally. So by having those organizations, they can really help. That doesn't mean that you're immune to something that would close the base because every base has them. Kelly had a bunch of them and they still got closed. But the better you have the tie with the community, with the military and the legislation folks, the better chance you have of doing everything you can to fight off any of those threats because they can pop up any time. We don't have a headquarters here, so we're at the mercy of what the headquarters might be thinking as well. If you have people that are honorary commanders or those kinds of things and are dealing with folks, they hear some things sometimes or if they don't hear anything, they will say, “Why didn't I hear something?” But the better the relationship is, the stronger that we integrate and talk with each other, the better off it's going to be for the base. So they need to continue that. You know, it never stops. You collaborate for a task like BRAC'95, but then you're going to collaborate for a BRAC'05, or for a workload transition or bringing in new platforms for management and for depot maintenance and those kinds of things. The threat never goes away, it just changes, and so you have to keep those organizations and relationships alive. As people move in and out of the base—civilian or military, it doesn't matter—or as new mayors come in and all 37 that kind of stuff, it's a constant training, if you will, to make sure people understand how dependent we are upon each other. AK: Was LOGSTAR also a part of bringing in the F-35 workload too? EP: No, LOGSTAR was more, I think if I had to look at an organization, I think UDA was probably more involved in that. LOGSTAR is, I'll just use an example: The guy who owns the restaurant doesn't know anything about the base, but he has a restaurant right outside the base. So how does he learn what goes on? LR: This is making so much sense. Suzie Patterson talks about LOGSTAR, so look at her interview. AK: Okay, that's good to know. EP: The idea is people who are dependent upon what goes on, if they're involved with leadership, they can learn what goes on. But I've actually led groups of LOGSTARs on tours of the base. We're on a bus, we're driving around, and I say, "This is what happens there, and that is what happens there, and that is what happens there." You get to tour the depaint facility or you get to tour the ICBM engineering facility or you get a chance to ride in an F-16 simulator somewhere. They get a hands-on feel about what goes on, and then sometimes a lightbulb comes on as to how big this base is, what kind of an important mission it has on supporting the warfighters all over the world. I think it's a good system, but it's not the one that's going to lead you to fighting off future threats. UDA, or in a case of if you had a major threat like BRAC, you'd end up having an actual commission of people who had experience with BRAC. Because somebody in UDA might not have gone through one. He or 38 she might be on the UDA today, but they never went through it before, like Vickie or somebody like that. Steve Rush. Those guys that have been involved an awful lot and they do great things for the base. They're going to have to continue to do that. AK: Okay, that makes sense. [To Lorrie] Did you have any questions? LR: Did McClellan have a similar system? Like LOGSTAR, is it nationwide or is it just something here? EP: No, as far as I know, it's not nationwide. But every base has something like that, because when I was at Tinker, I was in a position where I had, it wasn't LOGSTAR, it was something else. We ended up having a counterpart that we dealt with. It just so happened my counterpart was the chancellor down at the University of Oklahoma. So, every base does it, every base has a UDA-like organization where the local military leadership and the civilian leadership all get together. They trade stories about what's good, bad, or indifferent. Every base has it. I don't see that ever changing just because if you lose something, workload or anything else, it can be devastating. AK: That kind of goes into my next question. You had mentioned in one of your emails, "I do tend to think that the task of workload transition being accomplished successfully has helped Hill hold off other potential attacks via BRAC or other workload transition decisions." So how do you feel like the workload transition has helped Hill hold off other BRACs? EP: Well, it really doesn't matter what the workload is. In my view, if a base can handle a major transition, whether it be a program transition, a new contract, a 39 new weapons system coming in, stand up a new capability for radar platforms, develop new technology on de-paint facilities or upgrade the landing gear facility, those kinds of things; every time you're successful in being able to do that, you've actually told a story that, "Hey, we can do this. It really doesn't matter what the task is. You give us an opportunity and we can do it. Doesn't really matter what it is." The broader range those opportunities are, the better success that you have, all that does is breed confidence and belief in other organizations that are more senior to the base. If you give it to Hill, they're going to get it done. So, the more success of those opportunities you have, the better it is for you. I got to tell you, every other base, Army, Marines, Navy, all of those facilities that are in the same kind of business that we are, would love to have our work. So, you have to continue to perform and beat the expectations. But like I say, the more often that you do it, the better off the belief is that folks will have in you that you can do it. AK: Do you feel like UDA has a hand in helping with bringing that workload and promoting that? EP: I believe they have a hand in it. But I think they have an understanding of who can make decisions. They might even have an entree in being able to get with folks before a decision is made. They have certainly had an entree into the base to saying, “Hey, you guys need to,” let's say you have a negative idea out there, some folks don't think that Hill does X good, if you will. I believe that having that relationship with UDA and the military leadership that we have on the base, including civilians, if something is negative, the view is negative somewhere else, 40 they can come in and let us know. If we're good stewards, then we ought to be improving somewhere. I think they have a hand at it. Certainly doesn't hurt. The worst thing you can be is ignorant about what's going on and you're certainly not going to do it then. The good thing is I believe the people that are on the Utah Defense Alliance, I think they do a good job and they'll continue doing a good job. But it needs the support of the state. They need to understand how important that organization is because it's really not just Hill Air Force Base. Because when you talk about Utah Defense Alliance, it's not the Hill Defense Alliance. AK: True. EP: Okay? So, it's more than just Hill, but Hill's the largest organization with a lot of employees and a lot of different kinds of missions and stuff. It tends to get probably a little bit more attention, and should because it ties into—You look at all the local industries that surround the base that provide either contract repair or augmented staff or that kind of stuff. They rely on new missions and continuing missions and those kinds of things. They lose a job here, well let's say we lose the F-16. Anybody who's a contractor, look, they're going to lose that job, too. It's all interconnected. AK: That makes sense. So, in addition to UDA obviously having kind of their finger on the pulse, who else are the main players in making workload transition successful, or winning workload? EP: Well, the base organizations are the ones that have the responsibility of planning, 41 executing and then performing at the end. That could be a mixture of the military leadership, civilian leadership, the wrench turners. At the end of the day, the person out there on the line that's pulling an engine, how well they do that is going to be important. The leadership is great and they need to have that, but the whole idea of being able to do your job efficiently and do well has to permeate throughout the whole organization. It can't be just the leaders. It's got to be everybody all the way down through the workforce. That's why I tend to tell the folks, when I stood up the wing, I said, "This isn't my wing, this is your wing, and I can mess it up, but I mean, if you're not supporting your warfighter the way they think it needs to be supported, it's your wing that's going to hurt.” We collectively work it. But I mean, you've got to think of this is your job. This is how you do it. Don't matter whether you're maintenance, program management, supply chain, all of it deals the same way. AK: I just have a couple of more questions, but before I wrap up, is there anything else that you want to cover that we haven't touched on at all? [To Lorrie] Or any questions that you have either? LR: You asked it. EP: I don't think so. I mean, I wrote down some notes just to get my mind going. But no, not really. If you think of other questions, you can send it to me and I'll just send you an answer. AK: Okay, thank you. That sounds good. If after the fact you are looking through your notes and you're like, "Oh, I wanted to mention that," then yeah please email me. EP: Yeah, I think I've covered most everything. 42 AK: Okay, so just last couple questions: What do you think was learned from the 1995 BRAC round, just as a whole? Any lessons you particularly saw in it? EP: Yeah, I guess the lessons that I would have, and I look at it from both sides: closing and gaining. From a closing perspective, you're never immune from it. The planning of closing is really tough on the people. It's complex, and you can never do enough planning. On the gaining side, it's tough there. When you're accepting new people, when you're standing up a new mission, you got to train them and you got to meet the warfighters' requirements. You can never plan enough. I think every event that we've done, whether it's a new workload coming in, because it's a new system that's coming to us or because of BRAC or any of those kinds of things. I wrote down some notes, I don't want to forget those. There's got to be the open communication between the local, state and national congressional representatives, because at the end of the day, something is going to go on where you're going to need their help. Closing base and gaining base, you got to be able to communicate back and forth. I think you have to have that trusting relationship so that you can be honest in the problems that you're having. Because nothing goes smooth. Nothing. I’ve got so many stories, it's not funny. I think at the end of the day, it's great for people to focus on, "Well, I need to talk to so-and-so about a new mission coming in," or "I gotta go talk to somebody about a mission going out." At the end of the day, there's people's lives that are impacted [becomes emotional]. AK: Perfect. Thank you. How has Hill Air Force Base positioned itself for the future? 43 EP: That's a hard one, mainly because you don't have a single leader. When I came here, we had General Sullivan, he was the commander of the base. Well, since then, we've done multiple organizational changes. The supply chain guys report to somebody at Tinker, Depot Maintenance guys report to somebody at Tinker, ICBM guys report to somebody else, the Air Base Wing reports to somebody else. You don't have anybody that is in charge, if you will. So, the UDA has to figure out, “How do I get all these people involved, even though they got a different leader?” For example, the F-16 program office reports to the commander of the Air Force Lifecycle Management Center at Wright Pat. The air base wing reports to the Air Force, what was it called now? It's the Installation and Mission Support Center, now at Randolph. So, there's a lot of distribution of jobs out there. Ultimately, we're doing well, we're performing, we're doing the job that we need to do, but there isn't that centralized base leadership and UDA really needs to make sure they've got all the right players involved. I think they do, but it just creates a little bit more difficulty, if you will. I could go into details of how difficult it is, for example, the F-16 guys don't own their own manpower positions. They're owned by the Lifecycle Management Center at Wright Pat. So, if they decide that the Air Force is going to get a 10 percent cut, they can make a 10% cut out here. I mean, there'd be a lot of screaming, but they could. So, everybody's performing well, they're bringing in new workload, you got the right people integrated with decision makers (that helps), but you still need to tie the base leadership together, and they're not 44 reporting to the same people. The guy out at the 388th reports to the air combat commander down in Langley. He's not even part of the Depot Maintenance Organization. So, it's pretty complex. I know the people that are on the UDA and Military Affairs and they do a great job, but it's just made it more complicated because of the different organizations. AK: Would it be giving UDA too much credit to say that they kind of help all those sections of the base come together, as far as like they're the kind of the link there? EP: Well, they do link because they understand the mission of every organization and they draw them in. I know the 388th commander works with them and all the other senior leaders. I know they do it, it just makes the job a little bit more difficult because you can't just go to the one belly button. I remember when General Sullivan was there, and I think you're going to interview him, too. Poor Kevin had to deal with me when I was a wing director here, but he could touch the program job, supply job and the depot maintenance job and get everybody in a room and come to a resolution or something. That doesn't occur as easily today as it did then. Then, every base had a two star, so they all worked together on things they needed to, but then they could solve their own issues individually. I think, by and large, what I see is good performance. We haven't lost any workload so that's a good sign. I don't know of any threats, I personally don't know. I think they're doing okay. 45 AK: Okay. The final question is, how can the community continue to support Hill Air Force Base, especially in the event of maybe another BRAC round coming down the line? EP: Yeah, well, they need to stay with what they're doing. Don't change anything. If there's a major threat, BRAC, whatever the case is, then they need to be able to get together folks that have that kind of experience and a special committee or whatever, and I think the state needs to think about being able to fund that stuff. It's good to have people working together and meeting, and golfing and doing the things that they normally do. But some of these things that are major threats are going to require money. I know folks who are successful in holding off the ‘95 BRAC, and they were able to get some money and all that kind of stuff, haven't really done much with them in the last 10 years or so. But I'm assuming that they're pressing on, but it does take money to be able to fly here or fly there, stand up organizations to fight off various threats that come on and stuff like that. I would just continue doing what they're doing, and again, like I say, is make sure those different leaders were tied in, because without that too many things can be delayed. Short of making decisions timely, you can lose out on a potential new workload or something like that because you weren't there at the table. So. AK: Perfect. [To Lorrie] Do you have any other questions? LR: I do not. AK: Okay, great. Well, thank you so, so much. Really. This has been awesome. I really appreciate it. 46 ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW AGREEMENT ;;l ;;2_ This Interview Agreement is made and entered into this day(s) of by and between the Weber State U;).i;'ersity, Stewart Library Oral History Program (WSUSLOHP) ,v es, A. and /-";CJ,R_, I} M , hereinafter called "Interviewee." 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