Oral History Program Debbie Dujanovic Interviewed by Alyssa Kammerman 9 February 2021 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Debbie Dujanovic Interviewed by Alyssa Kammerman 9 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: Dujanovic, Debbie, an oral history by Alyssa Kammerman, 9 February 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 Debbie Dujanovic. It was conducted on February 9, 2021 through Zoom. Dujanovic discusses her experience as the military reporter for Channel 4 during the 1993 and 1995 rounds of the Base Realignment and Closure. Dujanovic recalls the impact that the closure of the Tooele Army Depot had on the local community following the 1993 BRAC. She discusses the renewed efforts of the Northern Utah community to advocate for Hill Air Force Base and Defense Depot Ogden through the development of Hill/DDO'95. Dujanovic covers the political climate during the 1995 BRAC and the triumph of Utah’s victory at a time when they were “the small fish in a really shark infested pond.” Dujanovic gives her memories of working with Congressman Jim Hansen to tell the story of and gain support for Hill AFB and DDO through using the news media. The interviewer is Alyssa Kammerman. AK: Today is February 9, 2021. I am on a Zoom call with Debbie Dujanovic, interviewing her for the BRAC 1995 project. My name is Alyssa Kammerman and I’ll be conducting the interview. Now that we’re recording, let me have you go ahead and start with your background. DD: So, my name's Debbie Dujanovic and I'm a television reporter, mainly now a talk show host in the Salt Lake City area. I moved to Utah in 1990 to take a job I was offered at KTV X, which is the ABC affiliate here in Salt Lake City. I was 23 years old when I was offered that job, and when I moved here the boss, the news director, asked me how I felt about being the military reporter. Well, you might imagine I was nervous, but of course I said, "Yes, I'd love to be the military reporter." What experience I had with the military was I was born on Vandenberg Air Force Base in 1967 and my dad served in the Air Force for a few years. For my only other experience you have to fast forward to the early 1990s, when I was working as a 1 reporter in Yuma, Arizona, and I covered the Marine Corps Air Station. I did stories on different base issues. I did a report on women in the military and that was it. When I moved here to work for Channel Four as a full-time reporter not only was I young, but I was very inexperienced in the beat that I was about to embrace. Keep in mind, in 1990, we entered Operation Desert Shield which quickly became Operation Desert Storm. As I was landing in Salt Lake City, we were putting boots on the ground to affect Operation Desert Storm. So you take Operation Desert Shield, move it to Desert Storm, and I'm responsible for covering Operation Desert Storm from a Utah perspective. It was immediately embedded, ingrained, and I had to get up to speed on the culture of the military, the missions of the different bases in Utah, the importance of the bases in Utah. I became extremely biased toward the military's importance to the state of Utah almost immediately. The Gulf War comes and goes. We, of course, in Utah experienced casualties. I'm with a few of the families and dealing with their journey through Operation Desert Storm and the untimely death of their loved ones during it. Now I become even more emotionally invested in the importance, not only of the military to jobs in Utah, to the communities, but also to the families of those who serve. By the time the BRAC hits, you have to figure out who was not first. It was the Tooele Army Depot, and you take the Tooele Army Depot out of Tooele, which is already a rather small community back in the early 1990s and you shrink it and you take away a tremendous economic base. Well, now my emotions became anger that D.C. could do this to the small town of Tooele. I actually covered that process from beginning to end. It was a real learning curve for me. By the time the Hill Air Force Base’s fate popped up on D.C.'s radar—and, in fact, I'm certain it was talked about earlier as well. I can't recollect exactly what dates, but I'm sure long before the mid-90s, 1995, and just a little bit before that. I'm 2 certain that Hill Air Force Base had come up on the radar before—I was familiar with the BRAC process. I was also familiar that Utah could be a target for tremendous loss if it lost Hill Air Force Base and the tens of thousands of jobs. Not only tens of thousands of jobs, but these were very high-paying jobs. So it would be a loss to the community, it would be a loss to the state, and it would basically be a black mark on our congressional delegation. It would be a black mark on the governor at the time. I mean, nobody wants to be the governor who loses the state's largest employer. This was a big story, I felt, and I think the newspapers felt the same way. I don't remember there being a tremendous amount of competition. I think maybe John Hollenhorst, he was here at Channel Five at the time, would have been my stiffest competition in terms of reporting. He's just incredibly versed at this, so he may be somebody you want to talk to. But my task at Channel Four from my boss— who, by the way, served in the military, so he was a veteran—was “You're not to miss a beat. You're not to miss a thing. You are to know as much as you can, and you are to keep our audience informed every step of the way.” I really did have a tremendous amount of opportunities for coverage while I was there. If I said it was a story, I could be on air at 5:30 or 10:00 with that story. So that gives you some background. AK: Thank you. I think it's interesting that you mentioned the Tooele Army Depot being closed in the 1993 BRAC, it evoked a lot of anger. Interesting point as well that 1990 was Desert Shield and then Desert Storm was right after. With those two big events going on, was there a sense of not only anger, but maybe confusion as to why there needed to be a base realignment and closure at that time? DD: Well, certainly, and I think the military tried to address that by discussing how much money it was going to save. But you have to think back to the Tooele Army Depot. 3 Not remembering all the details, I think that they had just recently won some sort of a contract to refurbish machinery, and there had been a tremendous amount of expense rolled out to do that. Then you have BRAC come along and the suggestion that Tooele Army Depot would be toward the top of the list. Also with Tooele, if you haven't been to Tooele, it's a really special community. Although, while I'm sure a lot of folks who worked at the Depot passed through town, they still congregated in town. They went to buffets in town or the supermarket in town. This was really at the core of future economic development for the community of Tooele, and you rip the rug out from under the Tooele Army Depot, you could essentially kill off this small Utah town that really had done so much for our military, because you not only have the Tooele Army Depot, but you now have the incinerator. I think it was probably a few years later that that was going on. So they're going to be stuck with incinerating all the bad stuff and all the dangerous stuff, but they're going to lose the good jobs. On top of that, you've got, beyond Tooele Army Depot as you continue the drive through the desert, Dugway Proving Ground, where there’s a lot of laboratory work that goes on out there, a lot of work that's kind of been mysterious to a lot of Utahans and a lot of stories about mystery that blooms at Dugway Proving Ground. So you have these residents in Tooele, and these business owners, that rely on the military for economic support. I remember, specifically, walking into a bar—because when you're out as a journalist, you're always looking for that next story to tell and the next person to interview, and you want to get away from the officials for every single story. My goal in my directive for my boss at Channel Four at the time was, “Always tell the human side of the story, Deb. Don't just give me an interview with the official at the Tooele Army Depot, don't just give me an interview with the mayor, talk to the people it's going to affect.” So my photographer and I walked into a bar in Tooele and I camped—I don't want to say I technically camped, but I was in Tooele 4 for weeks and months on end. I got to the point where I felt like I should probably buy like a home there or something, because I was there all the time, or just rent an apartment. I really, truly loved Tooele. I walked into a bar and I remember there was a country song playing and there was a pool table in the bar, and there was a man at the pool table. Now this is the afternoon, so the bar's not packed with a bunch of people, and it's a weekday, it's not a Saturday or Sunday. I remember Seminole Wind was playing on over the speaker system in the bar and the bar was all but empty. It hit home for me in that moment that here's this town that is going to lose jobs and families are going to lose their livelihoods. They're going to be given an option to move or they're going to be given an option to go for a reduction in force and maybe take a partial pension. I mean, this was all up in the air. And here's this song playing, and I see one guy at the pool table. I, in that moment, thought, “This town is dead. This is the decision from Washington, D.C., that’s going to kill off this tiny Utah community that had so many possibilities.” I, in fact, reported that this could be the death of Tooele. I did a live shot—did many live shots in Tooele—but I remember the specific one because I reported that this was going to be the death of Tooele. The next day I'm back at the station, and I'm on a landline, and the phone rings. It was Tooele City Councilwoman, Tooele County Commissioner, I don't remember her specific role but I remember it was a woman. She called me and she said, "Don't you ever report that Tooele is going to die from this. We are going to thrive from this." And they did. I drove through Tooele a month ago. I went out there just for a drive and I came through the back way, and I thought about driving out to the Dugway area, but I've been to the West Desert many times and I love that area. So I drove to Tooele—and this is before you guys had even contacted me, or maybe you just had contacted me about talking—and I thought, "Boy, was I wrong." 5 That town has taken off. However, I also had this thought as I was leaving Tooele, “How much different would it have been if they would have kept those few thousand jobs at Tooele Army Depot and other bases would have been realigned to TAD? How would this be any different? And would it matter to the folks?” I mean, it's a thriving community out there and people want to live out there. It's a place where housing is more affordable and there's young families and a lot of things to do. But at that moment, I really thought, “This is going to be a ghost town.” AK: That's interesting. I like that you shared the story of that woman who called you. DD: It was a councilwoman. I mean, it was somebody, and she was not happy with me. I sat on that phone for a while talking to her. Certainly that wasn't the end of the road for me and stories in Tooele, I was out there every single day, day in and day out. I would have hoped I would have, as a journalist—I don't remember for sure—gone out and done an interview with her and said, "Alright, how are you going to save this place?" AK: I think that's interesting because I feel like that is such an interesting way of showing the spirit of Utah resilience. My question for you is, since you were so entrenched in the community side of this, do you feel like the BRAC, the Base Realignment and Closure story, is a story of Utah's resilience? DD: Actually, at that time, I felt it was a story of Utah's attempt to survive, and survive political waters where we were the small fish in a really shark infested pond. It may be now the story of resilience, since Hill Air Force Base is still standing. I mean, obviously the Defense Depot Ogden went the way of the BRAC—and we can get to that later and my thoughts on that, when that was up in the air in terms of whether that was going to stay or go. But actually, at the time, I felt like we were outpowered back in D.C. Once Tooele Army Depot went, I didn't know for sure that the Utah delegation was going to be able to save Hill Air Force Base, at least in its 6 entirety. I really envisioned a scaled back version of Hill, although I couldn't figure out what they were going to do with the land. I think that there were some strategies—and I was pretty integrated with Congressman Jim Hansen's office in terms of being able to contact them—that I felt that they were able to use, from my perspective, that really worked in Utah's favor. So, no, at the time I didn't feel like it was a story of resilience. I felt it was a story of certain death to Utah's military bases. We were such a tiny delegation, we didn't have the kind of representation that, for example, McClellan in California would have, or other bases would have. You've got President Clinton at the time coming into office and we're like, "He's a Democrat. Utah is a red state. This is not going to end well for Utah." So that was my feeling at the time. AK: I'm so glad that we are interviewing you, because so far, all of the people we've interviewed had a more official capacity with BRAC or had more of a view of what it was like from the military side of things. One of the people we spoke with was General Lester Lyles, who was the Base Commander at the time, and he spoke about his regret in not fighting harder for the Tooele Army Depot Base. So I'm curious, do you remember how the 1993 BRAC community involvement compared to 1995? Was 1993 kind of a wakeup call for them? DD: Yeah, I think it was. I don't specifically remember, but I will tell you this, I do remember that it was very easy—and this may go to the General's comments—it was very easy for me to gain access to people at Hill Air Force Base. The Air Force still is and very much was media friendly. Hill Air Force Base had an incredible visual story to tell, because they’ve got the 388th Fighter Wing, they've got the 419th. They allowed me access to the pilots of the planes, and we would go to Hill, they would come to the studio. It wasn't always me driving up there forty-five minutes, which was fine, but they would come to the studio and make my life easier. 7 I remember they invited me to some training at the Air Force Base in Nevada. I could call Hill Air Force Base and say, "I'm thinking about doing a story on this," and I would be able to have that story on the air by five-thirty in the afternoon, which is my deadline. Tooele was different, and I don't think they meant to be different, but I felt it was much more of a closed circle when I was trying to do stories. Now, they may come out and say, "No, Debbie, there was this story, this story, and that story, and you just don't remember it right.” But I just, in general, remember feeling like, "It's so much easier for me to get an interview at Hill Air Force Base than it is for me to try to get somebody at Tooele Army Depot." Now, they got somebody in place who was a contact for the media, a public affairs specialist, and he was fantastic. But sometimes I felt as though their hands were tied and I think that worked against them. The power of the press can help a military base win in the court of public opinion, and that's what Hill did right. But they did not do that on their own. They did that with the help of Congressman Jim Hansen. I know there were people on the BRAC I likely interviewed. Do I specifically remember interviewing them? No. And what does that tell me? It tells me that there almost wasn't enough, there needed to be more. The politics behind the scenes may have been such that they couldn't talk. Look, I know. I was a spokesperson for the FBI. I get it, there's stuff going on behind the scenes sometimes you just can't get out there. Or if you say the wrong thing in this process, are you going to anger the wrong person? You could anger the president, I mean, they've got all these things. I don't know for sure. I'm just saying that I can understand that now, being twenty-five years out from this. But at the time, I think that was the biggest problem with Tooele. 8 The other thing is Tooele's mission was not a pretty one. I mean, Tooele isn't watching these F-16 pilots launch from a runway and fly overhead and do flips at these air shows. No. Tooele's mission was less desirable, and so for that reason, I think that became a real knock against them at the Army Depot, in terms of trying to save them and save those jobs. Tooele's biggest issue, I think, always was public messaging and community messaging, and making sure that the community understood their mission, and the value. So sometimes the story—in my view from a reporter's standpoint, and I've been doing this a long time—isn't your mission, it's what you provide to the community as a result of your mission. I thought the Tooele Army Depot missed the mark on that. So that's my take on what could have happened, but that's just my opinion. I'm sure that the Colonel and others did their best. Maybe it was too much behind the scenes. AK: That's an interesting point. So you mentioned that you had gotten to speak with Jim Hansen a bit and learn a little bit about his strategies. Would you tell me a little of what those were? DD: Well, look, let me put my relationship with Congressman Jim Hansen into perspective. I've been a journalist in Utah since 1990. I had more access to Congressman Hansen and his staff, in a period where we only had landlines—no cell phones, I don’t even think we had email—than I have access to congressmen now at the age of 53 as a talk show host on one of the largest radio stations in the intermountain west. That's not to say I don't appreciate their work, but that is to say that Congressman Jim Hansen, I don't know what his strategy was, but it worked. He gave me access, and he wasn't afraid to give me access, not only to himself but to some of his top staff members, which does a number of things. First of all, if I hear a rumor—because now I've been ordered by my news director to be the most knowledgeable on what's happening and when and what it means to the 9 community and how many jobs are at stake—when I hear a rumor because people are calling me, I could call them and say, “I heard this rumor,” and that helps them put out the fire. I mean, I'm going to double check with my other sources, but that helps them put out a potentially damaging story, because once the toothpaste is out of the tube with a story, you can't get it back in. You know, rumors are rumors. Rumors aren't fact. So if they're helping me tamp down a rumor it just saves a lot of unnecessary backtracking. I don't like to report rumors, I never did. So that access was key, and building a level of trust with the media. Maybe he did this for all members of the media and I just felt special, but at a very young age I was tasked with making sure that everything we put on TV was totally accurate. Keep in mind I'd only been in the business since 1989, I’d only had three or four, five years, so having access to a member of Congress, and he's embedded with this, he knows all there is to know. He becomes a commissioner, eventually. I mean, he doesn't just get a briefing on this stuff, he's in the thick of it. Whether that was his strategy or not, it should have been, because he was able to give me the best information possible, and I was able to vet it through other sources, and then report what's important to the community. So I always appreciated that. I think it's interesting, when I thought the other day about Jim and the access I felt I had to his staff—and I don't feel like they gave me any sort of national secrets or anything like that. It was just, "Hey, we're hearing that Hill is going to go on the list." "Well, let's talk about that tip." I feel like that was key to the saving of Hill Air Force Base, the biggest story in Utah for years, and also making sure our message made it back to Washington, D.C., because we're a long way from the nation's capital, and we're a lot of desert, and we just might not matter. The other thing that I thought—if I'm recalling this correctly, in a trip the other day when I was out there driving the West Desert—is the Utah Test and Training 10 Range, in my view, at the time really helped save Hill Air Force Base, because we have millions of acres of territory, where now they even lease it, or something like that, part-time to private industry. So this is a great strategy to not only cost taxpayers money, but to recoup some of the cost to taxpayers. We have the UTTR out there, and I've been out there many times as a reporter, and there's nothing out there. When you talk about training facilities, what could be better? I guess you could close Hill, you could move the jets everywhere else, you could fly over to the UTTR, but to me, it seemed like they went hand in glove. But that was my feeling about Jim and his staff. Before there were really media strategists in that part of the industry or in that side of the House, that I was aware of, they had a plan, and that was an open-door policy. They weren't impossible to get a hold of, I didn't have to call for days and hope they call me back. I would get the congressman on the phone. You think that happens today? No. Which is weird to me, because if you've got a story to tell, you’ve got to look to the congressman's office for a lesson in how to tell that story, because I thought they did a great job. AK: One of his strengths was to utilize the press and use that as one of his weapons, if you will. DD: Well, I'll also say this. When we spoke a minute ago about how you're getting a lot of official jargon, he just spoke like a regular person. I felt like when I was talking to him I was just talking to somebody who could talk at my level and help me interpret complicated situations and make them easy for not only myself, but also my audience to understand, my editors to understand, my executive producer to understand. I thought he had a certain spark about him. Maybe some people would say, "You're giving him way too much credit," because I'm sure there were other 11 people on the BRAC Committee here locally that were doing a fantastic job behind the scenes. I just felt like he was the face of Hill Air Force Base during that time. AK: You're not alone in saying that. Everybody I've talked to says, "Give the credit to Congressman Jim Hansen." Unfortunately, he's passed away so I can't interview him. DD: I know. I cried the day I found out he died. I was like, “He can't be 80 something years old.” In my mind, he was going to live forever. It's unfortunate that you couldn't interview him for this, because I thought he was brilliant at this. AK: Yeah, absolutely. So do you remember the day that the rumor came out that Hill Air Force Base was going to be closed? Because we've spoken with Steve Peterson, who had been on Congressman Hansen’s staff— DD: Well, I give him credit too. I just didn't want to name him. [Laughs] AK: But he was saying that apparently, I cannot remember which newspaper it was, but some national newspaper had printed a rumor that Hill Air Force Base was definitely going to close and it kind of caused an uproar. Do you remember anything about that? DD: I don't remember. I do remember this from that time though, there were all kinds of rumors. Like I talked to you earlier about the rumor mill, that was some of their brilliant strategy, was putting out those fires. I don't remember what national newspaper it was, but I don't doubt it happened because I would hear rumors all the time. I'm sure it caused a tremendous amount of panic for their staff as well. But I think, ultimately, we didn't end up on the closure list, if I recall, right? We ended up not being recommended for closure. I don't remember exactly what happened on that day. I remember Tooele Army Depot and that decision. I remember my phone ringing on that day, and my department is like, "You've got to get to Tooele." But I don't remember the day that Hill Air Force Base was going to be shut down. I 12 remember the aftermath of it all. I remember thinking, "How could they close this place down? I mean, this place is huge and we have so many jobs. Where are these people going to go?” It's a whole community built around it, much like Tooele, only far larger. It's Layton and beyond. To me, it didn't make any sense. I think that's where Hansen's team and the assets that we have here with the 388th, the 419th, which I guess could have moved, and also the UTTR really played into it. AK: So we spoke about Congressman Hansen's importance in saving Hill. What do you feel was the importance of the Utah Defense Alliance, which during the 1995 BRAC round was Hill/DDO'95? Did you get to work with them at all? Vickie McCall and Mike Pavich? DD: Yes, I did work with them. But at what capacity? I don't really remember. I feel bad. I don't really remember. I wouldn't know a specific story I did with them. We would have worked with them, but I can't recall. I know her name. I know Vicki, I mean, I recognize it. Mike, I recognize. But I don't remember what their role was in terms of media. AK: That's okay. As far as I know, they were a bit of a lobbying group, as well as they pulled together the big parade, if you will, that happened when the BRAC commissioners came and visited the base. So speaking of which, would you tell me, did you get to cover any of that day? DD: Gosh darn it. Maybe? This is horrible, but I don't want to just make it up. I don't remember if I was assigned to cover it that day, what was the date of that, do you know? AK: So they initially came to visit the Utah community I think it was December 9, 1994. Then they actually came to visit the base and to see how things ran on May 26, 1995. 13 DD: I may have been on the December one. I think that May 26th would have been a long shot for me because I was very, very pregnant with our first child. No, I wasn't married yet. I'm sorry, I'm confusing my dates. I just couldn't even begin to recall that. I'm so sorry. I wish I had my stories to go back to. AK: Well, at the time, were you doing like news reporting on television or did you do some newspaper work as well? DD: No, it was all television? I just worked for Channel Four. We had a morning show, a 5:30 pm show and a 10:00 pm show. So I was just a live reporter for that. At the time too, as Hill was becoming more in the sights of D.C., I figured Tooele had closed, I was also reporting more on education and so I was dual purposing my time. That's why I'm wondering if I did cover BRAC, I would have had to kind of set the education beat aside over the BRAC meeting and the tour and stuff. I'm wondering if my split time and stuff would have put another reporter up there. But chances are, if we sent a reporter, they would have sent me. But honestly, I cannot remember that exciting tour. I'm sure it was amazing and it obviously saved the base. So good for them. They did something right, they saved the base. I think that the thing is with the Defense Depot Ogden, which we lost, I again think that there we were going to have to have a sacrificial lamb with that. I remember covering that as the closures were happening and the decisions were being made. It almost felt, and I hope this isn't disparaging to anybody who was employed up there, but it was almost like, "Oh, phew. Okay. Well, we'll sacrifice that, but as long as we can keep Hill. This is the gem of Utah. We don't need the supply place, we just need the big military base with the big, cool, multimillion dollar jets." I think the Defense Depot, even personally, I was thinking, "Well, all right, if we've got to give up one of the children, we might as well give up that one." I remember, and I think it was McCall and others went to work, you'd have to fact 14 check me on this, went to work figuring out how to repurpose DDO. So it wasn't just this eyesore in the community and I thought that they had some pretty good strategies for that at the time. But I was actually relieved, obviously, that "If you're going to sacrifice one, we can't lose Hill." It’s terrible to say. I feel horrible saying that. AK: No, that makes sense though because it was the major employer, like you said. That's interesting that you bring that up, because I had read in a newspaper article that was a sentiment that some of the community had held. But every Hill Air Force Base person I've talked to says, "Oh no, it wasn't the sacrificial lamb. Not at all. We fought for it," and that's probably true. But the thing I'm interested in is, did the community as a whole feel like DDO was sacrificed? Did you get to talk to the workers and kind of get their...? DD: Well, the emotions are so long ago, and you have to think of the difference between a community like Tooele where it's very isolated, especially at the time, and a community like Ogden. I mean, there's lot of stuff going on up there. There's maybe a lot more job opportunities as well. I don't really remember there being a sense of anger. I just remember maybe more of a sense of sadness, and the fact that there was going to be, I mean, hopefully, if I recall, there were some opportunities given to some of the workers to go elsewhere. So I don't really remember there being that same sense, if you want to juxtapose my coverage of both, I didn't really feel that there was the same sense. Tooele felt just like, "We're going to die." And Ogden felt, "Well, we're just sad." But there was also a win in that for them. The whole community is like, "There's a win." You lose DDO, but you keep Hill Air Force base. I think it was a different landscape altogether. Again, I think there was also a lot of mystery with Defense Depot Ogden. If you're walking down the street and you say, "What does Hill Air Force Base do? Oh, you know, they make the big sonic booms 15 and stuff and they fly these really amazing jets." And you walk down the street, and you ask another person, “What's Defense Depot Ogden do?” They don't know, they have no clue, and so they suffered from maybe a lack of messaging as well there. My take was it was like they could absorb those jobs because it's Ogden. AK: Okay. Do you remember if you were able to go out into the community and do any interviews with the families of any of the workers or people just during the course of the whole BRAC process? DD: I'm sure we were. I would have been told to if I didn't on my own. Gosh, I would just be making it up if I said "Yeah, I remember sitting in somebody's living room." I just don't. They'll probably all come back to me in the next few days, but I've been thinking about that in the last couple of days. I'm like, "Did I go? I'm sure I would have.” I do remember spending a lot of time at Hill Air Force Base. Again, you've got an Air Force that their public affairs office is incredible, so telling their story, maybe not through tears of people that are going to potentially lose their job, but telling their story like, "Here's our mission. Here's why we are important to the United States military and we're important to Utah." And they were good at it. AK: Okay, that's good to know. See, I was under the impression that you had just interviewed the community members. So you also were involved in interviewing the workers? DD: Yeah. I don't know that we were specifically allowed to say, like, "Hey, how would you feel if the President of the United States, ultimately your boss, closed this place?" But more of the storytelling though, maybe not directly the actual discussion about base closure, but the importance of the mission. I think that's always a good strategy to have. You can't always dwell on it. In fact, a lot of times these folks weren't allowed to talk about it. I'm not saying that I remember specifically being told, "Don't ask about it." But a lot of times when you are working for the federal 16 government, you aren't necessarily allowed to talk about policies and that kind of thing, so you can either dwell on that as a reporter or you can figure out a different way to tell their story. But I always felt like that for Hill Air Force Base, and I give them complete credit. It's not just about in the moment either, you have to understand that their messaging, and it has nothing to do with BRAC, their messaging has to be on point, and their availability. The press has to be pretty much transparent because they're stewards of the community, too. They live in that community too, so their message has to be well established that they are valuable to the community, long before BRAC comes along every few years. So that’s where I always thought that they did a good job. I'm telling you, they were so easy to work with. I remember once I was actually going into surgery for a problem I was having with my gallbladder. It's another story, but I was in my hospital bed and my boss called and said Hill Air Force Base called and they want to offer you an opportunity to fly in an F-16. And I'm like, "Right now? Because I am going into surgery." Of course, I couldn't do it because there was the surgery, and then there was recovery time, and, honestly, at the time that I was having the surgery I was also pregnant, so there were all these factors that prohibited me. But I thought, for the Hill Air Force Base to allow me an opportunity to go up in the F-16 as a reporter, I mean, I was going to do a story on it, and to reach out to us was just brilliant. Then they offered me an opportunity to go to Nellis with their team for training, and they allowed me right there with the F-16’s. Anyway, I'm rambling, but that gives you a really great perspective of their strategy towards the media. AK: Yeah, absolutely. And when you did interview them, what were some of the things they said to show the importance of Hill Air Force base, if you remember? DD: Well, there were frequent stories that I would do on their fighter wings. There were frequent stories I would do on their workforce there. It makes it sound like, "Oh, well, 17 I'm the PR arm of Hill Air Force Base." There were some controversial stories that I would do, too. I don't remember the specifics of them, but sometimes they would have a disgruntled former worker or something call me, or somebody wanting to talk to me about something other than how great Hill Air Force Base is. They were always willing to research it and put somebody on camera, no matter how negative the story was. So that also goes a long way too, when you're a journalist covering them and trying to cover them from a very fair and balanced perspective. You know, I live in this community too, do I want to see Hill Air Force Base closed? No, I don't want to see Hill Air Force Base close. Did I put more stories on TV that were favorable to Hill Air Force Base because of that? No, I put stories on that were legitimate stories. If the fighter wing was returning from a mission and we had access to them, I would go out there. If they were prepping for another mission, I would go out there. If there was an announcement that they were making regarding base closures, I would cover that. I didn't necessarily mean it to be favorable to Hill, but I think at the time, you can't help but be a member of the community, a resident of the state of Utah, a journalist with a microphone, and ignore the importance that Hill Air Force Base is to the entire state, to our workforce, and to our economy, because these are high paying jobs. There are a lot of jobs out there, and when we move Hill Air Force Base and give it to California, that just seemed all wrong to me. AK: So in the aftermath of the BRAC 1995, did you get to cover any of the stories of Bill Clinton trying to privatize in place and keep those jobs there? I know that some of the Hill workers were kind of disgruntled about that. DD: Yeah. I don't remember all of the details of that. Like did I do this specific story on this specific day? I don't remember. But I actually felt that privatization had to happen for some of those jobs, even though it hurt some of those workers. I really felt like this about BRAC. There needed to be an adjustment. We just cannot, as 18 taxpayers, continue to allow any arm of government do things the same way they keep doing things as the price continues to skyrocket. Those are our tax dollars. So, if Hill Air Force Base is to stay open, if Tooele Army Depot is to stay open or closed, there has got to be another way to do it. I felt, in my reporting and just in my thought process in my reporting, if we keep a military installation open, but we privatize some of it, that's not all the taxpayers' burden to continue to keep up with the ballooning costs of our defense budget. We've got to look at that, because sometimes private industry does do it more efficiently and more effectively and at a better price than government does. If they were offended or bothered by that? Well, that's how these things go. BRAC—when you look at the numbers, and I don't remember what they are—but I remember their eye-popping numbers of the amount of money that the Defense Department was trying to save by realigning bases. A lot of this made sense, on paper, when you're crunching numbers. But when you boil it down to a community like Layton, you boil it down to a community like Tooele, you look at Ogden, there's emotions involved and there’s jobs involved. Those workers likely, if I were to put a microphone in their face and they were allowed to tell me whatever it is that was on their minds, and they didn't feel restricted, or they weren't afraid that they were going to get some sort of backlash from what they said, sure they're not going to want to lose their jobs. Why would they want to lose their jobs? They like their jobs, they're good paying jobs, they have great benefits, they have pensions. They've got retirement opportunities that a lot of jobs in Utah certainly don't have today, and those opportunities were dwindling in Utah. So I can't blame them for being angry. But the reality of it is there's two sides to this coin, and that is taxpayers have to make sure that they're getting the best bang for their buck. That's 19 what I felt, ultimately, BRAC was trying to do. Unfortunately, they were stepping on communities and obliterating military bases to get there. AK: That's fair. Do you remember, I know this is kind of a specific question again, and I apologize, but— DD: You don't have to worry about it. I just feel bad that I'm like, "Oh yeah, I don’t remember much." AK: You are not alone. It was a while ago, so no worries. Do you happen to remember anything about the transition of the McClellan workers coming to Utah or Hill Air Force Base? DD: No, I don't remember it. AK: No problem. What do you think was learned from the 1995 BRAC round? How do you feel like it has impacted Utah, maybe the military affairs side, or even Hill Air Force Base in general? DD: What do I think was learned? I felt like the process itself was a bit messy. I felt like there were a lot of unknowns for the community. I felt like there was so much loss potential staring at us in the very near future that it just felt like we were floating into the abyss and hoping that people like Congressman Jim Hansen or others could grab hold of something and pull us back. I also felt like Utah's story wasn't big enough to D.C. when we started this process. I think the biggest lesson, as an outsider looking in, as a journalist reporting about it, was, “What are we doing to prepare for the next round of BRAC? What are we doing to prove ourselves and our value now? We've got to get outside of Utah and the importance of a base in Layton to show D.C. our value.” We probably are behind the scenes, but we've got to somehow figure out a way to tell that story publicly right now so we're not trying to win in the court of public opinion days, weeks, maybe months or minutes ahead of another BRAC visit. 20 This should be stuff that we're doing now, and unfortunately, for future Utahns who are tasked with this monumental mission to save Hill Air Force Base, the problem is there aren't enough journalists in Utah who care anymore about what's happening at this massive military base in Northern Utah. When is the last time, and maybe it could go through the Standard Examiner, but when is the last time you saw a television news story about saving Hill Air Force Base, the value of Hill Air Force Base, the nuts and bolts about how they're trying to save money at Hill Air Force Base? I can guarantee you, I can go back to the archives, those stories aren't being told anymore. The value of media coverage in a positive light now is going to go a long way in a few years from now. I'm not going to make another prediction like I did with Tooele because Tooele is still alive. But I will tell you that I feel as though this is going to happen again. It may not be tomorrow. I might not even be on this earth. I might be interviewing Jim Hanson live amongst the heavens. He and I may be doing our own sit-down interview in a very angelic style by then. But it will happen again, and what are we doing today to position ourselves to be a military darling? Again, I worked for the FBI. I understand headquarters is a long way from Utah, and sometimes it's hard to send our message and our story back to D.C. in one little tight bundle over a weekend in order to save the base. You've got to be doing that over a series of months and years. That's going to be a challenge the next round for these people that are tasked with this, because they have to be able to get a hold of a reporter who's boss will allow them to put stories on TV every night like I did, or at least once a week like I did, who has the knowledge to know what BRAC stands for. And that's not my doing. I was told to do that and given the opportunity to do that by a boss who cared deeply about the military and the importance of it in Utah. That process has to start now. 21 That will be a huge challenge because there will be people who come out and say, "Look, Hill Air Force Base is bad in this way, this way, this way, and this way." And Hill Air Force Base or others are going to have to come out and say, "Well, we're great this way, this way, this way, and this way.” So when you're in the moment, it's too late. They've got to start that now. And I don't know if a BRAC is on the horizon, I haven't Googled it to find out, but our federal government is always looking to save money, and when you look at the expense it is to run Hill Air Force Base, I mean, it could be another easy target in the Utah desert that ends up on a list again, or in the sights of a president who says, "You know what, Utah's a Republican state. It doesn't matter one way or the other what happens to Hill Air Force Base in my book." So that's what I would say. It's my perspective, though. So, I'm media, that's what I would say. AK: No, that's very valuable. Since the coverage of Hill Air Force Base is waning, do you feel like that's due to maybe a lack of interest in military or even the base itself? Or are we getting complacent thinking that we're safe because it's so awesome? DD: I think it's probably both. But I think the hurdle you have on this side, if I can just explain it in a nutshell, the landscape of news has changed so much in the time that I set out to cover the Tooele Army Depot and I was assigned live shots of Hill Air Force Base in 1991. You think about today, we've got protests against police brutality, we've got a pandemic going on, we've got other issues facing the state day in and day out, the debates, the capital, different laws, medical marijuana, that just take over the media's time and our coverage, and you don't have the resources available in shrinking newsrooms. Newspapers are really, really good at covering these types of stories. Well, there's layoffs and they're shrinking, and there's other stories that maybe are more valuable to that particular newspaper. So I do think the landscape has changed so much that it's going to be a battle to get coverage on 22 that. Now, if you could get somebody like Jim Hansen, he'd sell it. Steve Peterson, he'd be able to sell it. But I just got done talking about how I don't have that anymore back in D.C. And maybe other reporters do, I'm just speaking for myself. But that will be critical in trying to save a community and save that Air Force base, if this happens again. Have you heard that they're coming up on anything? AK: No, no. This project came to our attention because Weber State and Hill Air Force Base had been trying to collaborate more on historic preservation, if that makes sense. This came up as an important story that needed to be told and preserved. DD: Good. Yeah. I wish I had like dates. I was thinking about that. You know, as a reporter, a lot of times you just get so many notes. I mean, [indicating papers] this is like a week's worth, right? I mean, it's just huge, and you toss them after a while. I was like, "Oh, doggone it. I wonder if somewhere back in time I would be able to find all my notes on this stuff or if they just went the way of the trash can,” which is unfortunate. AK: Yeah, and it's so much harder to archive live TV broadcasts as opposed to newspaper stories and such, so that makes sense. But one other question I had, and I'm sorry, you probably need to go soon. DD: No, it's fine. AK: We'll be like ten more minutes. I'm curious, so you were mentioning that you believe that a future BRAC round probably will occur. I was thinking back to, I mean, I know it wasn't the 1990s, but during 9/11, how that tragedy was such a big deal and there was such a feeling of patriotism through the whole country for so long there. However, do you feel like our world is maybe a little more desensitized to tragedies? Just because we get so many stories all the time on our phones, our social media? Do you feel like the community involvement would be different in another BRAC round? 23 DD: Yeah. I would say this, I think there's less a sense of community. We may be very affected by tragedies or incidents that happen in our own community, but we're disconnected because we're pulled in so many different directions. We can get our news from so many different sources, and we can get our news from people who pretend to be reporters on Facebook. I mean, your neighbor three blocks over is giving you all kinds of information, it may or may not be true, but we're just pulled in so many different directions. For that reason, I do think the sense of community has really suffered it. It hit home for me a couple of weeks ago when I was listening to the new governor Spencer Cox’s, state of the state address before Utah lawmakers on Capitol Hill. He said something to the effect of, “Put your phone down, make one less post on Facebook and go check on your neighbor.” I'm paraphrasing, but I think that that really could go to how we feel now as a community. We tend to rally around really major news events, 9/11 being one of them. I mean, as a country we rallied, as a community we rallied. We valued our military. We valued our law enforcement. Why? Well, because so many of them ran in and died trying to save others. And then years later, and there's just a typical ebb and flow, police are caught on camera doing things they shouldn't be doing, and now we're outraged at police officers and the ranks kind of dissolve. There's not as many police officers. Why? Well, because there's so much controversy, who wants to be a police officer anymore? And by the way, the pay is nothing. So you can sort of apply that same sense of emotion to the military. We are so distracted as a community, now, that the sense of community that we felt around like Tooele Army Depot, or we felt around Hill Air Force Base back fifty years ago, thirty years ago, twenty years ago, is just not going to be the same. I think you could take that and apply that out to Tooele. If they came in now today and said they were going to close twenty-one hundred jobs 24 at Tooele Army Depot, would there be the same outcry today with sprawling homes and lots of families and huge community growth that there was back when I walked in that bar and Seminole Wind was playing and there was one dude in there at the pool table? No. We're so different now and all the distractions we have with families and that kind of thing, we just don't have time. I mean, when's the last time you've sat down and watched the ten o'clock news? You get on your phone or you look at it online. I think you hit on an excellent point. But I think it's more of the sense of community has dissolved. I think that could also go to your question about does that create a challenge, then, if another BRAC comes in and says, "Hill Air Force Base is being considered." Does the community, A, find out about it, and B, are they focused enough to care about it? AK: That's an interesting point. Whether we have another BRAC in the future or not, what do you believe that the community can do to continue to support Hill Air Force Base? DD: Well, it's hard for me to tell people what to do. When I tell people what to do on the radio, I get so much backlash, but I get paid on the radio to say that. So what would I tell them? What would they do? If you love your military, if you love living by an Air Force base, if you love the fact that your spouse, or your parent, or your son or daughter has a job there, spread that. I mean, be proud of it out loud and let the community know that you stand by the military, you stand by the Air Force, you stand by Hill Air Force Base. I don't get up to Layton like I did almost every week for the longest time back in the ‘90s, I was up there all the time. But I was up there not too long ago, in fact, dropping my son off—he took his car up to Layton to be repaired, because there's a repair shop up there that he really likes—and it just felt like a bigger city, it didn't really feel like a military community to me. But that's just 25 me driving through town, driving through a few streets, and looking around and being like, "Oh, it's been a long time since I've been with Gaye at Hill Air Force Base. Wow, I hope they're doing well in there." I would say show your love for the military, if you do love the military. I read a story when Representative Jim Hansen passed away, and his son said—I think in the Deseret News, I was probably reporting for the Deseret News, because he passed away a few years ago—something to the effect of, every time an F-16 would fly over their home, he would say, "That's the sound of freedom." If you feel the way Representative Jim Hansen felt about living near Hill Air Force Base, just spread that. I'm not suggesting you have to put twenty flags in your front yard, but maybe one. So that would be my advice. I think it can be overwhelming for people too, in this regard. Where do you begin? Like you're just a regular, average citizen who goes to a job and you come home every night like, "I want to do something, but where do I even begin?" Maybe organizing a Facebook group if there isn't already one. I mean, where I live, we will organize these little Facebook groups and there's two, three hundred people on there. But when something happens, it's our little news source. So maybe they've done that already, but I think just that that would be my advice. AK: I love that. Before I ask my last question, I wanted to just know if you'd covered anything about BRAC 2005, would you want to do any kind of a follow up visit on BRAC 2005? I don't know what involvement you had during that time. DD: I really would have had none, and here's why. By then I was named the investigative reporter for KSL TV, and so I know I didn't cover the story. I know all the stories I was covering then quite well, because I lived them for months. So I would not have had any involvement at all in ‘05. I wonder if John Hollenhorst, one of my colleagues here, would have had that. He's retired. I could certainly see if he 26 would allow me to share his phone number, if he still has the same number. I could track him down. He might have covered ‘05. How I met John, just for background, was I was a military reporter at Channel Four. He was covering something, and I remember him sitting there because I was like "Geez, this guy's like a network reporter or something. What is he doing in Salt Lake City?” He was at Dugway Proving Ground with me and that was back in like 1991, so I know he did a lot of military coverage, and he may even have better recollection of the BRAC visit for Hill. But I met John at Dugway, so he was involved in the military coverage here. I think I beat him on all the stories though, just for the record. [Laughing] I don't know. It was always like this little competition. You want to be first on everything. I don’t know. We'd never be able to source that anyways. Nothing good would come from that. But no, he's an awesome reporter. So he could be one too, if you decided you want me to, just let me know. AK: That'd be great. Yeah, we would definitely love that. So if he was willing to give us his information. DD: Sure, I'll reach out to him. AK: Now, the last question I had, and it may be a little off topic, but I think it'll kind of tell an interesting story. So as I was doing a little research on you, just trying to get some information for questions, I came across an article that talked about how you arrived in Utah with the goal to report here for three years and then move to a larger city, and then twenty-five years later you're still here. So what was it about Utah that made you choose to stay? DD: Well, fact check, it's actually now been almost 31 years, so I need to update that. The people and the news competition. First of all, I live by the mountains and they're huge mountains and two beautiful canyons. I'm like, "That is just incredible." It's heaven. Except for the ski traffic, that's another story, but that's been more of a 27 recent development. It's the people too, and here's what I mean by the people. The people were, and always have been, very accepting of me when I was out on stories. People would allow me into their homes. People would trust me with their stories, they would call me with tips, and they would give me details they wouldn't share with other reporters. For that reason, I felt like, "Where am I going to go in this entire nation and start over again with trying to get to know people?” I mean, I have a huge list of sources over thirty years that trust me with documents and stuff and things that are important for journalists to be able to tell stories accurately, fairly, comprehensively. For me, it was really the people and the fact that we do have a really good competitive news environment here, even though I hate it when I read things like there's layoffs at the Tribune—I know it's all financial related—because I do believe in news competition. It is a good thing to have multiple media outlets reporting on one issue and sending their best and brightest in to get the details, because we're all going to see it from a different perspective. We're all going to have different sources. We're all going to have different ways of approaching that story. And any time I go out and speak to groups, I say, "If you just raise your hand and tell me you just watch me on TV at 10:00 at night, I'm going to be bothered because I think it's so important, especially journalism students, to make sure you are reading all platforms, websites and newspapers.” Of course, they're all on websites now. But listening to the radio, which is like, "This is my whole life now, is radio." But that's why I stayed. I have envisioned myself like, "Where can I go? Am I just accepting the fact that I'm in Utah because it's comfortable?" Every time I say that, probably much to the chagrin of some of our listeners, I never see myself leaving. I just don't see a reason to leave. 28 The other thing I will say is this. When I got in this business, it was different for women than it is now. I grew up in Phoenix, and I remember seeing the first female news anchor. I think the whole town freaked out. I don't know how old I was, I wasn't old enough to be in college yet, but you have to think, “Okay, I'm 54 now.” It was different for me, and for other women, too. So for me to feel as though I had gained a voice as a strong female journalist in Utah through the grace of the stations that I've worked for, through the bosses who have supported me through thick and thin, and through the community who has entrusted me, it's like, "I'm not going to go anywhere.” So that's it. Another long-winded answer, but if you're going to ask, I'm going to tell you. AK: No, and I'm so thankful that you have, so thank you for this interview. It's been incredible. DD: Just let me know if you need anything else. AK: Thank you. If there's anything that comes to your mind after we end the interview here, that you're like, "Oh, I should have shared that," or "Oh, that's a person's name," email me or Sarah. We would definitely love to hear anything else you have to say. DD: Have you reached out to Channel Four to see if they have any archives back that far? AK: You know what? I don't think we have. DD: It's a thought, they might not have all of them. KSL TV is amazing. We used to have a librarian, in fact. We have an awesome archive system here. Not on the radio side, I'd say it's a TV side. Deseret News, of course, has archives online. But, I would say, KSL TV, I walk by our library room every day on my way out, so we have tons and tons of stories. I'm not sure how searchable they are or whatever, that's somebody else's wheelhouse, but that might be an option too. I could send you the 29 news director's email and you can reach out. That would be like John Hollenhorst. I don't have anything here in terms of Hill Air Force Base, because that was way before my time, because I came across the street in 2000 to KSL. AK: So John Hollenhorst, he still is with KSL? DD: Well, he retired from here, but once in a while he will still pop in so I know I can get a hold of him, but those would have been his stories, or other reporters' stories. I honestly don't know who they had covering, or if they covered it as heavily as we did at Channel Four. AK: Yeah, and that would be awesome to look into that, because we've mainly been operating off of the Hill Air Force Base newspaper and then the Ogden Standard Examiner. So like you said, historians also like to have lots of sources as well. DD: I just don't know. That's a lot of tape for Channel Four to save. They might not have saved it all, but I don't know. I used to work out of a new facility once in a while. I actually went back and freelanced there back in the late ‘90s before I came over here. I left there in ‘97, Channel Four. But anyway, I'm not sure how much they save, but I know we save a ton of stuff here. AK: Awesome. Yeah, I'll let my boss know and we'll get on it. DD: Yeah, there might be something. Hill Air Force Base too, we used to give them tapes all the time so they might have some stuff hidden away somewhere, and it's going to be probably on a beta tape, but you guys probably have access to figure out how to convert that. AK: There's rooms, yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so, so much. Seriously. It was an excellent interview and I appreciate it. DD: Sure, I hope it helps. Let me know if there's anything or if I misremembered something. I don't think I did, but if I did, let me know and we can work through that. AK: Thank you. I appreciate it. 30