Oral History Program Vickie McCall Interviewed by Alyssa Kammerman 15 December 2020 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Vickie McCall Interviewed by Alyssa Kammerman 15 December 2020 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: McCall, Vickie, an oral history by Alyssa Kammerman, 15 December 2020, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Vickie McCall. It was conducted on December 15, 2020 at Weber State University Stewart Library. McCall discusses the founding of the Utah Defense Alliance—formerly known as Hill/DDO’95—in the midst of the 1995 Base Realignment and Closure. The interviewer is Alyssa Kammerman. Also in the room is Sarah Langsdon and Ben Zack on the camera. AK: Today is December 15, 2020. We are at the Stewart Library, speaking with Vickie McCall for our Base Realignment and Closure project. My name is Alyssa Kammerman and with me is Sarah Langsdon. We also have Ben Zack on the camera. So, Vickie, thank you so much for meeting with us today. It's a pleasure to get to interview you. VM: Thank you for having me. AK: We wanted to start out just with a little bit of background. So, from what I understand, you're a realtor by profession, but you have been involved in military affairs for thirty years. Is that correct? VM: Forty. AK: Forty years. VM: Forty plus, yeah. AK: Tell me about what got you interested in military affairs and how you got started down that path? VM: When I was starting out in real estate, you want to develop a client base, and one of the things that became very evident is that Hill Air Force Base has a big population of military community that move in and out. I thought if I could capture some of those people, that would be a great initiative to move in. So, I joined the 1 Military Affairs Committee for the Ogden-Weber Chamber—then it was just called the Ogden Chamber—and just kind of got hooked on all of the things that were going on and the incredible people. It was so different from my day-to-day experience and I just loved it. After a few years I became the chair of the committee, and at that point I was working with a lot of the leadership at the base. In particular, one evening we were at a summer picnic, and I remember the commander of Hill Air Force Base—we were at his house—he sat by me and said, “Vickie, what are you doing about BRAC?” At that point I thought, "BRAC?" You know. “Base realignment and closure?” He said, "Yeah. What is your committee doing? What's your community doing?" I'm sure I looked at him with that deer in the headlights look like, “We are in such great shape here. Why would we even be concerned?” With all the seriousness he could muster, he said, "You need to start working this." One of our newest members on the Military Affairs Committee was a man named Scott Trundle. He had recently been named the publisher of the Ogden Standard-Examiner, and in conversations Scott had told me that his company— who had just put together a merger of the paper—were very, very concerned with buying this newspaper if anything happened to Hill Air Force Base. So, I talked to Scott and we went to a few other people, including Lee Cruthers, who was the 2 regional director of, at that point, I think it was Rocky Mountain Power. Then we just kind of put a committee together and thought, “Maybe there's something to this.” It was very—We didn’t have anybody working on it, we'd never been involved with a BRAC. We started contacting and working with Jim Hansen, who was our congressman at the time, to try and better understand BRAC and how vulnerable we might be. That was probably the beginning. It was this commander saying, “You need to do something. This is serious.” AK: Do you remember who the commander was? VM: Yes. Commander Dale Thompson. He was a major general at the time. AK: Okay, about what year was that? VM: Oh, gosh. You know, I can’t remember the year exactly. It probably would have been three to five years before the actual BRAC. Let's say three years. So, that would have been maybe ’92. It’s gonna be ’92 to ‘93. AK: Were there other action committees in the community at that point to serve as a kind of bridge between the community and the military? Or was the Military Affairs Committee the only one? VM: The Military Affairs Committee was the bridge between the community, the business leaders of the area, and Hill. I am not aware of any other organization that interacted with Hill Air Force Base at that time. Now there are a few, but back then it was the Military Affairs Committee. 3 AK: Okay. I was curious because I had seen a Standard-Examiner article come out about the rules that action committees had to follow at that time, so I was wondering if there were multiple. VM: It was really our committee. Then from our committee, we developed the Hill/DDO’95 group, which now it is the Utah Defense Alliance. AK: Okay, so how did Hill/DDO’95 become a separate group, apart from the Chamber’s Military Affairs Committee? Was that kind of spurred on by that conversation with Commander Dale Thompson? VM: Hill/DDO’95, because we knew this was going to be such a hot issue—and it was truly a big, big concern from the community—we needed to pull away from the Chamber and become autonomous in what we were trying to do. At that point, we also needed to raise money that was separate from the Chamber. We had travel expenses, we knew we were probably going to have to hire a marketing firm, maybe a lobbyist and an executive director for our committee. So, it was thought that we're going to get more community support if we become our own organization. Now, a member of our group at that time was Scott Parkinson, who was the—I don't know if they called him the president or the executive director of the chamber, but Scott became a part of that. We also knew we were going to have to go statewide, that this was going to be more support than just the Ogden community. We're going to have to go to Cache County and then go down to the Salt Lake area. This really was a state effort. So, that's why we became our own 4 organization. We had to have some bylaws, and we wanted to become an organization that could raise money and not be taxed. AK: So, tell me about that secret meeting in Dave Tanzi's basement. Was that towards the beginning of your forming Hill/DDO’95? VM: When our group first came together, we decided one of the things that we needed to do early on was understand the DC perspective of Hill Air Force Base. We needed to go beyond our commander at the base, but probably go as high as the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, who at that time was General McPeak. So, we put a group together and we started to make some trips. We started to investigate as much as we could, and what we found was that we needed to understand what the Air Force thought about Hill. We had a general perspective of the Air Force in Washington, DC, but the commander of Air Force Materiel Command was a general named Ron Yates. Ron Yates was making a visit—as the four-star commanders of Air Force Materiel Command do now—to the base. This is a perfect opportunity because, we thought, he's going to be the one who will offer us up to the BRAC commission. It will be his recommendation, because they were looking at all the depots, so we wanted to find out what his perspective was. We thought, “We need to put this in a very casual environment. Hopefully this will encourage him to open up and talk.” But we needed to have the right people there so he knew that we were taking this very serious. We also wanted our state leaders to understand and hear it right from General Yates. So, we talked to Jim Hansen, to Governor Mike Leavitt, to our two senators, and at 5 that time it would have been Senator Hatch and Bob Bennett. So, we had our governor, our two senators and our congressmen, and then the executive team for UDA. We wanted to find a place where we could talk openly, and that ruled out restaurants or any public places, so we twisted Dave Tanzi's arm and his wife, Deb. Deb was on our committee, Dave was the commander of the 419th at the time. We said, “Can we use your basement?” Because they have a big meeting room. We approached Ogden Regional Medical Center and asked them if they would provide all the food. We brought everybody together in what was a secret meeting, no press. You can imagine the security on the street, because you've got a four-star general, you've got the commander of Hill, and you've got our entire delegation and the governor. We are sitting there, trying to figure out where we are. The good news is, it was exactly what we wanted to provide in terms of an environment that was comfortable and free flowing. Although I say that, "comfortable and free flowing," our questions were scripted. We knew who was going to say what, we knew who was going to take the lead, and a lot of that we put on Governor Leavitt. We were in the basement, and he just made it so conversational that we chatted and we talked. Governor Leavitt said to General Yates, “If you have to offer a depot for closure, who are you going to offer?” He said, “It will be Hill Air Force Base,” and that was where the lights came on. We knew truly how much trouble we were in, because if the Air Force is going to offer us, then we had battles on every front. 6 It wasn't because we weren't good, or we deserved to be closed; he offered Hill Air Force Base because, “Politically,” he said, “it's going to be the most expedient.” Can't touch Georgia, because I think they had Sam Nunn at the time. They're not going to touch Kelly in Texas, because they have the largest minority workforce and were heavily unionized. Tinker had large aircraft and nobody else could do the work at Tinker. Then when you go to McClellan Air Force Base in California, just count the number of House members and the political influence McClellan has. At the time, I think President Clinton was the Democratic president, and we thought that there's no way you're going to touch McClellan. General Yates said, “You're just going to be the easiest. Your rates are good, the work is good, you don't have union problems, and your workforce is probably the best at what they do in the entire country. But you're it.” AK: How did knowing that the odds were against you affect your tactics, or your battle plan, if you will? VM: Well, at this particular meeting with General Yates, we had the base commander there, and that was General Les Lyles. At that point, that was a rude awakening to him as well, because now we have to look at all the documentation that's coming off of the base and make sure that everything that was submitted for the BRAC criteria was absolutely accurate and could be placed in a very positive light. We also knew that we had a lot of work to do. Back in ‘95, and as we were working up to that BRAC, people didn't travel then like they travel now, and we didn't have zoom phones. I think we were still carrying bricks at the time, in terms 7 of cell phones. So, you just didn't see that one-day travel. It was a big trip, so we didn't get a lot of visitors. People didn't understand what we were doing at the base, how efficient we were, the space, the training range and what we had to fly. So, we really engaged our delegation. They put a full court press on. So, with our delegation and our committee, we started lobbying hard. At that point we had Mike Pavich, we had a number of other people, and we just made our emphasis to every place we could go—Air Force-wide, DOD-wide, in Washington—that's where we went. We made a number of trips. So, yeah, it changed our tactics. This was not only local, this became national business. We had to play on that national level. AK: So, how did you start getting the word out nationally? Obviously, you traveled to Washington, DC. Were there other efforts that you made? VM: Well, we hired a lobbying group to work with us. We also had a marketing group. Gil Barley, who worked for Thiokol—and Thiokol has since changed and has had several different names—but Gil offered the services of his company and his personal expertise to help us do some marketing. We put out brochures, certainly we let the entire state of Utah know what we were doing. Governor Leavitt became very, very engaged with all of the governors. I mean, to say what we did, we had dog and pony shows for every chamber, every city government, county governments. Then we would take this and we would start with the secretary of the Air Force. We would talk to the leadership. We had commands at Hill, Air Combat Command, because that's the mothership for the 388th flying wing. We 8 went to the Reserves, Air Force Materiel Command. Every stone that can be turned, we turned. AK: I remember hearing you and other Hill/DDO’95 members say that, at the time, it felt like people living anywhere South of Layton didn't really care about Hill Air Force Base. What was the support like from the governors or mayors south of Layton? VM: It helped a lot that Governor Leavitt was really one of the spearheads for this charge. But we also had Marty Stevenson, who was a local legislator who became engaged. Lane Bennett, I think Lane Bennett at the time was the president of the Senate. Lane lives in Davis County. So, we were able to influence some key legislators in the state that this was a big deal. Lane went to the Salt Lake Chamber to tell them how important this was. We knew that they didn't understand the economic impact, so one of the things that we did is we had a study done by the University of Utah that helped us understand the economic impact of Hill Air Force Base to the entire state of Utah. When that came out, then we knew there wasn't a region that wasn't touched by those dollars that went from the base to the state, and it was a lot easier to get their attention. AK: Were you also involved in trying to protect the Utah Test and Training Range at that time? VM: Absolutely. The Utah Test and Training Range is vital to Hill Air Force Base. Mike Pavich coined a phrase when we were working; he said, “You have to look at Hill as a three-legged stool.” You've got the Utah Test and Training Range, you have 9 the depot, you have the Reserves, and all of these things together. It was then a three-legged stool, but we have since added the missile work that we do at Hill, so I'll change that to a four-legged stool. One of those legs falls off the stool, and the stool falls. There's no way we could survive without that range there, because it's so important nationally to the defense of the country, and certainly to the 388th, to the 419th, and even to the aircraft that we fly from the depot. AK: When we were interviewing Mike Pavich a couple of days ago, he was mentioning that you kind of had different sections to Hill/DDO’95. For instance, there was a group of people that was specifically over the Utah Test and Training Range, and then there was a group that was campaigning specifically for Hill Air Force Base or Defense Depot Ogden. Could you tell me a little more about how that worked, exactly? VM: There's so much work, and there was so much to do to make the presentation, we kind of formed subcommittees. We had to task people to specifically dig into, maybe the test range. That would probably be Steve Rush, he led that effort. From there, that branched out into we had to make sure that the base was free of encroachments. So, we put Steven in that camp. We said, “Steve, get who you need, do whatever you need, but you need to look at the encroachments in the Utah Test and Training Range.” We had people that worked on the missiles, and Mike was an expert. He understood that. I was kind of hovering and had my fingers in all of the pots, but I was the chair of the committee, so mine was more just to keep the committees working, make sure we were on task, that if we had timelines we met those timelines. 10 But I don't want to take anything away from Mike Pavich, because I might be hovering, but Mike was really the glue that kept us all together, because he understood the lingo. As a civilian, I don't know how much involvement you've had with the military, but they speak a foreign language: the language of acronyms. If you are not in the military, it really is a foreign language. But Mike understood that. He had depot background, and certainly knew about BRACs. So, Mike was the one that was the super glue; I was kind of over those civilians looking at what we needed to do to keep the communities involved and engaged and moving forward. So, yes, to tell you exactly how the subcommittees were formed, I would have to go back and look at the list. We had marketing, like I said, Gil Barley. Then we had legislative. We also had a person that worked with us and came to every single meeting. His name was Charlie Johnson, and he was the chief of staff for Governor Leavitt. Charlie was huge, because as Charlie would hear these problems and as we got into the discussions, Charlie would say, “Let's take this and go here.” So, there were some real key people that worked on different committees. AK: Okay. So, from Mike Pavich's interview, I understand that you guys at Hill/DDO’95 had approached Mike and asked him to be the chair of your organization. What was the process for finding people to hire for these different positions within Hill/DDO'95? VM: We knew that if we were going to have to travel and if we were going to try and get into some doors that might otherwise remain closed for us, we had to have 11 somebody that had credibility. If you could bring a two-star general in, he's going to be able to open a lot of doors. Somebody that was well respected, understood depots—and he was the former commander at McClellan and he could speak the language—we knew that's who we had to have. So, when you look at the pool of generals that were out there, we were really pleased that Mike lived in Utah, and we didn't have to bring him into Utah. He was already here. It was a gift that Mike was here and he was interested in helping us. I can't tell you, there just aren't words to describe how invaluable he was to our process because of his credibility, because of his rank, because he lived here, and his willingness to get involved. AK: Okay, and so the other members that you had hired on, were they also similar where they had some military background as well? VM: Hired on... Mike was our only paid committee member. We did give him some staff, but they worked for Mike and they were more secretaries and meeting facilitators, things like that. But they were paid such a small amount of money. In fact, some of their services were donated from like a Thiokol corporation or from the city. AK: That makes sense. How much was General Lyles able to help you guys? Because I know that during BRAC 1995, the military was told that they couldn't officially have any input in BRAC and in helping with those efforts. So, what was he able to do? VM: We had to be very, very careful. When I say we, I think the military had to be very, very careful, because they report to a boss who reports to the commander 12 in chief, and they have some very specific lines around them as to what they can do and what they can't do. General Lyles gave us as much information as he could that would be public knowledge. I would say he was open. He was easy to access. When we were talking to General Lyles, we knew when the line in the sand had been drawn and we couldn't get the information from him. But not getting it from him meant we had to go someplace else. He loved the base, and he loved the community, and he was just a genuine, decent man. So, he was incredibly helpful. In subsequent BRACs, the commanders were told that they couldn't talk to us, they couldn't give us any information, and that was very, very hard. SL: Talk a little bit about the encroachment issues that you guys had to deal with at Hill Air Force Base. I heard you ended up having to work to move an elementary school? VM: There was a school, I believe it was a private school, and it was very close to the runway. That being said, they were there for good, and we had to work with the state legislature in order to get money to buy this school or allow them to move so that the encroachments would be removed. The state came up with $13 million to help us move that school and free up the encroachment that was around the runaway. The best person to talk to about that would be Steve. I don’t know if Steve’s coming in, but that’s who you want to have, because he did that. AK: So, when you talk about encroachments, does that have to do with the times that they were able to fly, or something else? I'm just curious how an elementary 13 school would affect the mission readiness or flight patterns of fighters at Hill Air Force Base. VM: It can be flight patterns, it can be noise. When those planes take off—there's an AICUZ zone in the housing in the area—if it’s too loud, that meant the builder had to put special materials in the house or they were not allowed to build there, because of the hazard to just the noise. So, to get into that, again, I would have Steve tell you the specific encroachments, but you have to make sure you're not in a flight pattern in case there's an emergency. Some of those planes, before they can land, if they've got a landing problem, they have to abort all their fuel. Where are you going to do that? On the top of an elementary school? You know? I mean, there are so many things that can come into play. There have to be certain heights, and it depends on what kind of an emergency the planes might be encountering. So, you just have to have free zones, noise, and the safety issues that follow. Building up butting against a runway, that is not a good thing, because, again, it limits what you can do. AK: So, what were some of the behind-the-scenes efforts that most people didn't see or don't know about? VM: Behind the scenes would be… I'm sure there are a lot of people that don't know how many conversations we had that were with our deep-throat sources, that we were working every avenue, that we built a lot of trust along the way. A lot of people liked Hill Air Force Base that were back east, and they stepped out and helped us, but they were sources that we couldn't quote. 14 I don't think people knew that there were times that our committee was meeting five nights a week trying to put things together. Every day, there might be a new development. This became overwhelming for some of us who had regular jobs, because our work was so passionate, and we knew how important it was that we really sacrificed a lot. I'm speaking for the whole committee, because we, like I say, we could meet five days in a row, meet weekends, take evening calls. We visited so many communities to try and raise money. I don't think people understood where we went, how many of us went. I mean, we had meetings with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission when there were concerns about nuclear waste being stored in the desert. I would doubt anybody really remembers that. If we could get somebody to talk to us that could provide us information that would help verify what we think we already knew, or would build a case to support the work that we were doing, we were there. AK: There was a newspaper article in June 1994 that I read where it talked about how your group had gone to Washington, DC, and apparently the politics of the visit had been discouraging enough that you decided to “change tactics.” I don't know if you remember this specific instance, but what was the focus before the visit and then how did the politics you ran into help change your tactics? VM: I would say that what we found out from our visits to DC is the misinformation— what I call that Beltway—what they thought about Hill Air Force Base. Even Senator Bob Bennett—I respect him, I think he was a great senator—but I remember him saying to us, "When I walk the hall, I hear people talk about 15 BRAC, that they should just close Hill. So, let's just close Hill and move on with it,” not knowing what kind of an impact that would have to the community. I think what our economic impact study showed us—we’re very careful about this, because you don't want to scare all of Utah. I mean, you don't want people quitting the base or giving up on us and saying, “Let's just get out of the base right now and start privatizing.” But the results of the study said that if Hill did close, this would cause a depression very similar to the Great Depression for Weber/Davis counties and really for a lot of Utah, that would take us 40 years to get out of. Now, those are heavy words. So, when somebody would say—here's an example, we heard a secretary of the Air Force say once, “You don't have good flying at Hill because of all the storms and the weather.” We thought, “We don't have good flying with that range? I mean, we live here, we know how they fly.” You know? So, we had to turn that around. But if somebody is going to say that it's going to be easier just to redevelop your land, we thought, “We'll change those. We'll fight tooth and nail.” People were not understanding how good we were. We had made a commitment with our committee early on that said, if the Air Force, the Department of Defense, could show us that there would be value in closing Hill and it would be better for the country, okay, then we'll support it. But you have to prove to us first that we're not good at what we do and that our numbers are not good and it could be done someplace else better. But nobody could show that to 16 us. So, when we came back from that ‘94 trip it's, “We have a lot of work, but you're not going to stop us because we know where we're going with this, and we know we deserve to stay open.” AK: Was this around the time where you had that meeting with General McPeak and when he tried to walk away you told him to sit back down? VM: That was probably that meeting, right. Because I don't think they were taking us serious. So, when we had this group of very high-profile people from Utah in this meeting, and they gave us what I would call your "Chamber of Commerce tour"— that is not to be derogatory towards any of the chambers, but it's just basic information: here's your command structure, this is how the Air Force is laid out, and whatever. We knew that. What we wanted to find is what do you think about Hill? Where are you going to push BRAC, in terms of, you own the Air Force, what do you want to see happen? We didn't get into any of those discussions. We've got all these people sitting around the table, and when he looked and thought his time was up, I was like, “Oh, no, your time is not up. Now we're going to talk about what we came to talk about.” I know the article says—I pulled it out the other day and it says, "McCall tells McPeak to sit down." I just felt at the time it was a lot of weight on my shoulders. I looked around the table and I thought everybody who is anybody in the state of Utah is sitting right here at this table. I'm the leader of this group. I can't let the head of the Air Force walk out and go, because it costs us a lot of money to go back there and time and energy. So, it really was just one of those things, those unfiltered comments that came out when General McPeak stood 17 up, I was like, "Sir, you better sit back down because we are not done.” Then I realized, you know, and smiled, thank goodness. He looked at that, "Oh, okay," and sat back down. But it was one of those moments, every bit of oxygen in that room I could just see was sucked out when I said, “Sir, you better sit back down.” But that's why; it was so important. Then we got into the stuff we needed to talk about. AK: But from what I understand, that moment of you telling him to sit back down, it did catch his attention and even his respect a little bit too. VM: We became friends. I'm one of the civic leaders for Air Combat Command, and we'll have meetings where we're in DC, it’s a pretty high-profile command. Then when I was asked to serve for the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, there were opportunities when McPeak had retired, he would always come over and always seek me out and we would chat. Even after that meeting, and he was the Chief of Staff, he would always come over. There was just like a bond of friendship. So, it worked. It could have gone the other way, but this one worked, so I'm really happy about that. AK: Was Mike Pavich also in that meeting with you guys? VM: When we first brought Mike on and we went into that McPeak meeting, Mike couldn't interact with anybody in uniform, because he had retired. The new announcement of the Secretary of Defense was that he has to be out of the service seven years before he could actually take a civilian role. With Mike, because he had just recently retired, he was forbidden to interact with some of 18 the active-duty military. So, when we were in the room with General McPeak, Mike was in the hall. So, there were a lot of things that we worked around. But we could translate to Mike, and Mike would say, “Okay, this is what they mean by that. This is what you're going to do,” and whatever. So, it was really phenomenal to have him. I remember just thinking, I don't even know what the first line says. I do not understand this. Mike could take some of the stuff that we were given, or we would take notes, and not only could he understand it, but he could read between the lines, the nuances of what that actually meant. Because even if we could read it, we didn't know what it meant, and we didn't know how that would play out for us. He’d say, "If they do that, that means you lose this line of workload because you take these people out, because you've just done this." You think, oh my gosh. I mean, everything had a consequence. AK: Was that intimidating at first? VM: Oh, you have no idea. I shopped for two weeks for a power suit to go to Washington. Remember, too, at the time I was doing this, there weren't a lot of women involved, especially in military issues. Women weren't flying jets. Women weren't in the academy then. So, for me to be there, I was as nervous as you can imagine. I would stay up nights and read and try to get my questions done. There were a couple of women involved with the Chamber at that time, and they’d help me practice how you sit at a table to take up space so you can be taken seriously and don't, by any means, don't take notes, or they're going to think you're the secretary—just weird things that probably affected me more than they affected some of my male counterparts. 19 But this was heavy on my shoulders. My mother would say to me, “How can you go to Washington with all those men? Isn't your husband going?” “No, my husband is not going.” “You can't go, you can't travel with men!” Now, that was in my own house, you know? I'm home. I'm trying to work my way through. Then to go to the Chambers, and these were all men. So, yeah, I was nervous, scared, intimidated, not knowing how I was going to be received. Am I smart enough to do this? Do I get it? You know? There were times I thought I just needed to quit. Then I thought, “Dang it, I'm not quitting. I am not going to quit!” There were things that I then learned that I could do that maybe some of the others couldn't. The McPeak example is a classic. I think I just flustered him, and I don't think the other guys could have pulled it off. So, yeah. Oh, scared. That is such an understatement. My pulse just racing when I walked into the Pentagon and knowing, you know. Thank goodness Jim Hansen and I became just the best of friends and he would often say to me, "Nobody else can say it, Vickie. You can, you have to do this." AK: That's actually really interesting because I hadn't thought of that before, so I'm glad that you shared that. Because it doesn't seem like it was that long ago, does it? VM: It doesn't seem that long ago. But I was the first woman to have, you know, I mean there were so many things I got to do, and I really traveled with 12 to 14 men, and I was always the only woman. Even now when you come to a UDA meeting, we've got women that represent some of the congressional offices, but I 20 often look around and I'm very cognizant of, how do we bring more women into this? How do we get the women involved? Yet when you look at the commanders at the base, the highest-ranking officer is General McCauley von Hoffman, a female, the commander of the 75th Air Base Wing, which means she really owns the base, and she’s a woman. The best fighter pilot in the Air Force is assigned to Hill Air Force Base, and the demo pilot is a woman. So, we're there on that side of the house, but where are we on the civilian side of the house? How do we get more women? Because, other than those people that come from the congressional sides of the house, they're not there. They're just not there. AK: Tell me about some of the efforts you made specifically with the community members to help them understand why Hill Air Force Base was important to them. VM: For the local area—when I say local, I'm going to say Weber and Davis counties. This even crosses the line into Cache County and Box Elder County—and I'm not sure if these numbers would hold true for ‘95 as they do now—but one in four, now, has a connection. Either they work at Hill, or they're a subcontractor, or something like that. So, when you look at the community, and even back in ‘95, the number of people that drove through those gates every day, this is huge. So, it's not as if we had to teach the community about Hill. If they didn't have somebody in their family working there, somebody in their neighborhood worked there. We pretty much knew—and then you start talking about closing the base. Well, now people immediately think jobs, and what happens to the dry 21 cleaner that supports the base, or the grocery store that supports the community that supports the base? The story there was not so much a hard-sell as it was, how serious is this threat? Overwhelmingly, the response from the community is, what can we do to help? I remember in particular, we had a meeting at—I don't know if it was the Hilton or the Marriott down in ‘95—but it was the biggest ballroom and the biggest convention area in Weber and Davis County. We hosted a meeting, and we invited the rotaries and the exchange clubs and the community at large. It was standing room only. It went out into the foyers and the hallways and people were there. The excitement would just lift the roof of that hotel. "What can we do?" Our presentation, "We need you to help to share the story. We need your money. We need you to engage. We have got a lot of people to convince, so help us." The spirit, and the enthusiasm just would knock your socks off. Then I remember the visit of the BRAC commissioners, and we said, “We need you to line the highways and the roads from the airport to Hill Air Force Base.” It was amazing, because the school districts got together and let the school kids out, and they had banners and they lined the freeways. The Salt Lake Chamber lined the terminals of the Salt Lake Airport with people, and we had the senators in the cars to drive the BRAC commissioners here. You know, that's 30 miles. They were looking on both sides of the road and the gates and the overpasses and people waving and yelling and having flags. That was the community response. It wasn't a hard sell. They wanted this base. I think they understood the economic impact, but they're also very, very 22 patriotic. We pride ourselves on being from a state that takes defense so seriously. AK: I also saw that you had an elementary school come and sing for the BRAC commissioners and everything. Do you feel like community support was something that would sway the commissioners’ decision? VM: First and foremost, the commissioners have to look at the hard data. What are the statistics? Is our base efficient? How is the workload production? What are those issues that may affect the workforce? How are your unions? Then they'll go into the economic impact. But it's usually the mission first and the hard data. But I've had conversations with a number of commissioners, and they have all told me that you try not to be influenced, but you are influenced, because you see how important this is. So, maybe what those commissioners do is they look harder and they take a more critical look at the empirical evidence that's put before them to see if, in fact, it holds true. But before those commissioners left Utah, we all had an opportunity to talk to them, and they said it made a difference. Made a difference in terms of how they vote or made a difference in terms of their perspective at Hill, I don't care which one. They came and they left, and they had a different vision of Hill Air Force Base. AK: Would you tell me some of your efforts in getting funding for Hill/DDO’95? VM: We went to a lot of the big stakeholders in the area, people that did business with Hill Air Force Base or knew how important it was. That would be Rocky Mountain Power, that would be the gas company, it would be the newspaper, the city councils, the county commission. We had the hospitals. We had a lot of in-kind 23 services, Thiokol, ATK. If they could give money—whether it was a hundred dollars or ten thousand dollars—we knocked on their doors. Through the chamber's efforts, they were able to give us money. So, I remember going to the board of realtors and saying, “We need money in order to carry this fight and to present this message.” The board of realtors were extremely helpful. We had listings of all the communities, and we'd take the chamber list, we'd take the phone books, then we'd all take our own personal acquaintances and we'd knock on doors and we would make the calls. But it was difficult, because you had to approach people, and that's not an easy thing to do. But people really saw the value. I can't tell you, those first few months when the money came in, either in sizable donations, in-kind services, or people just saying, can we give you $20? We took it all. AK: You even had just members of the community sending $20 here and there? VM: Oh, yeah. People wanted to help. Livelihoods were on the line. There's a legacy out there, the history of that base from the very purchase of the ground to building the base. My grandmother worked at Hill Air Force Base making munitions. My aunts and uncles worked there for war efforts. People don't forget, and it's something we're so proud of. Yeah, people would give us money. AK: We've noticed as we've been looking through Congressman Jim Hansen's papers and other archived sources that a lot of kids wrote to Utah congressmen and asked them to save the base. Did Hill/DDO’95 ever get any letters like that? VM: You know, I can't remember if we had letters. If we had a mailing address, which we did, I'm sure we got letters. But I will tell you, I would go to the grocery store 24 and people would stop me and say, “Thank you for what you're doing.” I don't see myself as a public figure that has a star quality where people would stop me. But because we were in the paper so often for our efforts, I became very recognizable, as did all the members of the committee. Even to this day, people will say, “I remember you. Thanks for what you did.” I spoke at the Daughters of the American Revolution, and some of these women are quite elderly, and they would say to me, “I remember. I remember.” That's 20 years ago. So, we touched a lot of people. Even the schools. If you think about these choirs that came from a local elementary school, their parents would talk to us and just say, “Thanks for what you're doing. So happy somebody's out there fighting for this base.” SL: How involved were the state legislators during all of this? VM: Our state legislature was phenomenal. Again, they understood—it's not hard when you see the economics of what the base brings. I mean, all politics are local, and those legislators knew that these were their districts that could be affected. Even if you lived in the far southern corner of the state, you still know the impact of the dollars that are going into that state treasury. We had opportunities to go down and address the legislature, and they were so helpful. There might have been a couple that weren't sure about giving us money, but overall, we couldn't have done it without the strong support of the legislature. Again, Lane Batey, who was President of the Senate, and Marty Stevenson, I believe he was Speaker of the House. We had strong, strong support, and they were able to carry the case as to why this is so important. Then 25 the governor, who just took every opportunity to speak about the importance. This was a state effort and a community effort where everybody came together. I honestly can't think of any groups that were in opposition to what we were trying to do, other than maybe some extreme environmentalists who would like to see the range closed. But they were such a minority. We just had overwhelming support. AK: Were there any efforts made to specifically save Defense Depot Ogden? VM: Yes. Hill was the big fish, that was the big kahuna that we were going after, but we equally were trying to support DDO. Mike Pavich became an absolute expert in what was going on with the logistic side of DDO. We did everything we could to try and save DDO as well, it just didn't happen. Whether the numbers weren't as good or the mission was better suited someplace else, we were terribly disappointed that we lost DDO. That was part of our effort. In fact, when we were going to Washington, we weren't always going to see the Air Force, we were going to see the Army as well. Dave Corell as the commander, then Colonel LeBaron was his follow-on Commander. Dave was Navy and Colonel LeBaron was Army, and we tried to interact with all of the touch points. Again, there was huge disappointment. But it is what it is. AK: What were the argument points that you had for keeping DDO open? For instance, I know the military tried to bring on interservice work at Hill Air Force Base to show that they were essential to keep open, but did DDO do anything like that? 26 VM: You know, I’m uncomfortable in really answering that question. I'd rather have Mike Pavich answer that. I would say, there were a lot of old facilities at DDO. The workload was not so much interservice, but I want to be careful of that. The work was important, but it could be realigned and assigned elsewhere. I remember going through all the DDO stuff, because we were there, we spent as much time at DDO as we did with the workforce there—not as much, but we all spent considerable time. But I’d rather have Mike answer that question. I think, 20 years, I just don’t remember all of the issues that we had with DDO. AK: I'm curious about the process of Hill/DDO’95 becoming the Utah Defense Alliance. Would you tell me a little bit about that story and kind of how it evolved? VM: One of the lessons that we learned from BRAC’95 is that you can never take your base for granted. No matter how good it is, no matter the work statistics, you can just never take it for granted, because times change, people change, and even the politics change. If you've got a very strong senator, in this example I’ll use Senator Nunn from Georgia, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee: what he says goes, and you can't underestimate that kind of political influence. So, we knew that there would probably be another round of BRAC, and then there would probably be another round, and you don't have the time to play catchup. You've got to stay engaged every step of the way, year after year. What we should be looking at is how we can grow our base, make our base even more important and more credible, rather than try and save a base. So, obviously with DDO closing, that required a name change. We started to look at what did we 27 want from this committee? What were the lessons learned? It is, you must stay vigilant. You must stay engaged. No matter how safe, how secure you are, you can't count on it when another BRAC round comes around. AK: What was the media's involvement in future BRAC rounds? Was it essentially the same as in 1995? VM: Yes. When we get together, even one of our meetings right now, we’ll look at strategies. Where are we going with GBSD, Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent and missiles? Where are the encroachments on the ranges? Do the ranges have the most recent and the most advanced equipment for our fighters to train with? What are the workforce issues? It's a constantly changing environment. The aircraft changes. We've gone from A-10s and F-16s, to F-35s and F-22s. We're doing different workloads, and we're growing. We now look at Hill as a center of excellence in so many different areas. The UDA has been hugely supportive and involved with GBSD. UDA took a very, very high-profile, strong position fighting for the F-35 to come here. We were absolutely instrumental in that decision. We got involved with the people that did the environmental studies to make sure they had information. We keep what we deal with and our statistics and our data points current, because we make sure we're always engaged with the leadership of the bases, with the leadership of the state, with the governor or with whoever can supply information. We are looked at nationally. I'm boasting, but we've earned that right to boast. There's not another organization in the United States that is as well funded as we are and has an organization as strong as ours. We have the politicians, 28 both legislatively in the state of Utah and federally. We have the governor's attention; he has his number one person, Gary Harter, sitting on our committee. I mean, we work constantly to make sure that we are one step ahead of the game. We're looking for those new missions. What is it going to take to bring them here? When the F-35 becomes an old aircraft, what will replace it? Are we ready to accept that? What do we have to do to bring a new mission on? It could be the brain power, the technicians and the engineers, to the people that turn the screws. We must stay ahead of the game. AK: Do you feel like Utah’s strong involvement in UDA, as well as the impact that you have, is part of the legacy of the 1995 BRAC? VM: Oh, absolutely. There's no question. Without that group of Hill/DDO’95, and then morphing into UDA, we would have just gone away. Then probably when the word went out that they're going to have another BRAC, we'd all try to scramble together, but we didn't let that happen. We knew. We were so much smarter after ‘95. Plus, we also knew the politics of the game. When you have a general that will tell you you're the easiest one to close—not because you're not the best, but because you're the easiest—that sent shock waves through all of us, and we knew then it would be a constant battle. Utah's a small state. It has relatively few members of the House of Representatives, and we're a long way away from the Beltway. AK: How do you feel that BRAC 1995 also affected the community's support of Hill Air Force Base, or the importance of Hill Air Force Base in general? Do you feel like there was a legacy there as well? 29 VM: I think, you know, those people that knew the base or worked at the base, they're looking at it for a livelihood. You know, this is important to them. But what we did is we sent a message to every citizen in the state of how important the base is strategically to the defense of our country. So, yes, there is an economic impact there, but we're important to national defense. If you're important, you don't turn away, and it's easy to gain support, and people want to wave the flag. We’ve had people say—when maybe we’re trying to get a mission, or we want some special money from the Air Force—“Well do you want us to go stand at the gate and wave?” “No, no, it's okay. You don't need to do that.” If there is a story that comes out about a crash or whatever, people say, ”What can we do to help? How can we give?” We still get calls from TV reporters that will say, “We heard this news story. Will somebody from your committee come and stand in front of the gate of Hill and talk to us?” It's about a story that's not even really associated with Hill, but, yeah, it's just this community. I feel it because I've been so involved and I’ve touched those people who still say thanks, and “What’s going on?” and “Are you still involved with the base?” You just know, we're so lucky that we have those people and a community that cares. SL: What were the feelings of the committee when the BRAC 1995 results finally came out? VM: There was such jubilance. After the announcement came out and we knew we were safe—and I'm going to say relatively safe, because there is a follow on story to that. But there was such jubilance in this community. First of all, we were 30 elated beyond words, and everywhere we went, everybody just, "Wow! We did it!" You know? You didn’t hear people say "They did that," what I remember is "We did this!" Because you gave money or stood on a highway or supported the committee or you’d do whatever we would ask. It was a state effort. We did this. It's hard to even express the excitement and the relief that now jobs are safe and we can move on. Some of the best days of my life. I just remember the after action and how thrilled we were. We celebrated, high fives, it's just so hard to even describe. It was amazing. I said relatively safe. It was not too long after the announcement that the bases that were going to be closed—McClellan and Kelly Air Force Base—that the president of the United States got involved, and he said, “What we'll do is we will privatize McClellan in place.” That meant that Hill Air Force Base would lose the workload to McClellan. So, then we went into round two. We’d won the BRAC decision, but now we had a political decision where the president wanted to move the workload to McClellan. That was round two of the battle, and that was another reason why we decided you can't ever just rest and say you’re safe, because the politics change. If the president is going to move the workload, the president can move the workload. It took an act of Congress to stop him. AK: Okay, that's something I didn't know much about. Would you tell me a little more about the president’s efforts to privatize? VM: Well, at the time, California had a whole lot of House seats, and California was one of the president's states. The president had made promises, “We’ll keep McClellan open.” When McClellan went on the list, the president responded by 31 an initiative to say, "We might close you as a military installation, but we will privatize the base, keep it all in place, keep the workforce there. In order to keep that base open, you're going to have to close another base or move workload out of another base to McClellan." The plan was to move the workload out of Hill Air Force Base to McClellan, which would then make us inefficient, and we would end up closing anyway. Jim Hansen was very, very powerful on the House Armed Services Committee, and I want to say, this was a whole-delegation initiative. The governor got involved and we at the Utah Defense Alliance were very much involved. Jim passed legislation prohibiting that privatization to take place, and the entire Congress jumped on board, and that was a big deal. Now the president can't just move workload. He's restricted by numbers and dollar volume, and that is still in place today. But, you know, truly, there was nothing we could do as a committee. This took federal legislation to stop the president from privatizing in place. AK: That's crazy. It's almost like he was angry that McClellan was getting closed down. VM: Oh, he was, yeah. We may have only had two House members, maybe three at the time. Then you look at California, hundreds. It makes a big difference. SL: So, President Clinton wanted to privatize McClellan, which would end up moving a lot of the workforce from Hill Air Force Base to there. You said Jim Hansen got involved with passing a Congressional act. Is that correct? 32 VM: It was federal legislation. So, the president said, in effect, “I can get around this decision to close McClellan by privatizing the base in place,” and he could. I mean, he has the power. He could move and do things. This was a total breach of confidence in the BRAC process. It undermined everything that had taken place, and it was in denial of all the statistics and the evidence that had been put forth. So, Jim Hansen drafted a bill, and this was prohibiting the president from moving workload and/or people without having Congressional approval, and so that was passed. That prohibited the president from privatizing McClellan or any other base. In fact, that truly was the second leg of our efforts to save Hill, that he was able to thwart the president's threats. SL: So, did the workforce from McClellan and Kelly end up coming to Utah? VM: Yes, we did bring a huge number of people here. In fact, UDA went to McClellan, and we took a number of people down, and we had realtors and business people from the community, religious people, that went down to say, "You are welcome here, and whatever we can do to help facilitate and make your move to Utah easier, we will." We had a lot of workforce specialists that went down so that we could make that transition for them as easy as possible. It's not easy when your base is closing down, and that's your home, and say, “If you want to keep this job, you're going to have to move to Utah.” We did everything we could. There was a governor's task force, as I recall. Hill sent so many people down from the base. They actually sent people down to live at McClellan for a year to work in the transition process and try and make it easier. We did the same at Kelly, though most of the work that was coming was 33 coming from McClellan. Kelly would transfer their work to San Antonio and to Warner Robins, and it's just because of the size of the aircraft and the specific workload that we were doing. AK: Going back to privatization in place, how long did it take to overturn the president’s efforts, and how involved was UDA in that process? VM: You know, we were definitely involved, but it didn't take years. I mean, it was just like, “Well, slap that bill down.” Remember, Jim is very, very strong in the House Armed Services Committee, and his rank in the Republican Party in terms of the legislature. I mean, he was in that inner circle of key people, so it wasn't really hard to get a bill and get a lot of support. Then we had Senator Hatch working on the Senate side. So, it wasn't a bill that met a lot of resistance. Every state in the country had gone through the BRAC process, and to think it could be undermined and somebody could get around it. I don't want to say it was easy to pass because I was not in the legislature, but it didn't take long. It just took several months, as I recall. AK: You mentioned that when the news about BRAC originally came out about Hill Air Force Base being safe and everything, that there was a lot rejoicing and everybody felt like they had been a part of it. Do you feel like that kind of helped to mend that historic rift between Ogden and Salt Lake? Like did that help unify the state even more than before? VM: Well, I wouldn't describe—we referred to it as the Mason-Dixon line, you know, “They never come north, we go south.” It wasn't that there was a rift, they were just so far away from us. Salt Lake and the Salt Lake counties, they were the 34 economic hub. It was only after BRAC that Provo and the Orem area really started to develop. People didn't go to their jobs by driving north, we drove south. So, they just didn't have the understanding. I'm surprised, even to this day, how many people south of Davis County have never been to Hill Air Force Base. It's quite a number. I mean, even today, how can you not go to an air show or not be aware of this? So, I think it came down to this awareness campaign, and once people understood what it would mean if we lost the base, they formed their own Military Affairs Committee in Salt Lake. Now they support the National Guard and some of our Reserve units, because the Guard's at the Salt Lake airport. But still, we invite them up and they come, and there was more of a reaching out. I don't think their involvement will ever be as great as those people who live in the two counties that host the base. There's not animosity between the north part of the state and the southern part of the state, they just aren't here to see it. That's why UDA does an economic impact study, and we update it every two or three years, to make sure the state legislature and the entire state understands how much money flows to our state coffers from Hill Air Force Base. Once you get that, then you understand how important we are militarily. Most people identify with that F-35 rather than somebody turning screws on the depot side of the base or those engineering talents that we recruit. But they get that. I don't know if Mike mentioned this, but we host a breakfast every year with the legislature, bring the entire legislature together, to make sure they understand what we're doing. We invite all of our military entities, you know, 35 whether you're National Guard, Navy, from a recruiting station, or whatever, we have them come in. So, we try to make sure that we stay on the radar screens. We visit. We go to Tooele, we'll go to Dugway. If you have a military group in your county and you want us to come, UDA will go. So, we work very hard to make this a state-wide enterprise so we don't ever have to go out and re-educate at a very low level as to what's going on in our state. AK: That kind of answers the next question I had, which was, what does UDA look like today now that it's been 15 years since the last BRAC? VM: We have a very informed, educated group of people that work on our board. We've got the presidents of the technical colleges, president of the university. We have people asking to be on our board because they see how valuable it is. I don't know that we have ever asked a member to serve and they've said no. This is a huge honor, and when I say honor, it's an honor because you're serving with so many incredible people that are very, very busy and yet will carve out time to come do UDA. Our board is awesome. In addition to some great business leaders and educators, we have a representative from the congressional offices and from the senate offices. When these senators or these congressional people are in town, they'll ask to come and speak to us. They'll ask us if they could come and address our group. Of course, when we go to Washington, we always see them. When our high-profile leaders from what I would call "the Beltway" are in town, they are always advised by leadership, protocol, public affairs, “You ought to carve out time to meet with the UDA. That it is a critical point that it is very important to your visit here.” So, 36 you know, where ‘95 we were begging and scratching on doors to get in, they ask to see us when they come and when they're here, and the base knows to carve out time. I'll give you just a little tidbit: It's been a few months, but I was called and told that the head of Air Combat Command was going to be in town, would I host him for dinner? I thought, “Well absolutely!” Because that gave us that intimate, in my living room, opportunity to talk to the mother ship for the 388th. They'll always do that. We've always suggested we like those conversations where, you know, we like big groups, but we want the conversations where we can get in your face and just, in a very nice way, say, “Tell us what's going on. How can we help you?” Also, leadership understands how important the Utah Defense Alliance can be in negotiating position, bringing everybody together, helping inform us to inform our local people, because sometimes we know more about, let's say maybe the timing of an introduction to some issue, than they do. Because remember, there are lots of bosses and lots of layers of authority between a local commander here and a four-star there. So, they look to us as being their conduit to transfer information. It goes both ways. The local leadership will come to us, because they're not going to pick up the phone and call a four-star, where we will. So, it really is great. AK: Before we wrap up, is there anything else that would be important for us to know? 37 VM: If there was something that I would like to add, it's that I hope I can communicate how lucky I believe I am to have been involved. When I die and I look back at everything, obviously my family will be first and foremost. You know, I'm so blessed to have them, and a husband who allowed me to take off and go gallivanting to wherever parts unknown to do things that sometimes I couldn't even tell him about. But I just feel so fortunate to be involved in a movement that was truly important. There are so many people to thank. My role was just not that of the leader or whatever, but it was to interact with people that felt the same way I did and saw the value and could teach me and educate me and mentor me and allow me the opportunity to serve. It's humbling. Still, every time I go to a UDA meeting, I just think, gosh darn, I'm lucky. I'm so lucky to be with such great people, not only from the community side of the house, but I've been able to see a military community. I know this probably sounds trite—I don't mean it to be—but when you look at the Air Force core values and the way they live their lives every day and the things that they do to interact—you know, excellence and service before self and integrity in all that you do—I mean, that's a blessing I was given. So, I would just say thank you. AK: That's beautiful. Thank you for that. SL: Thank you. We appreciate it. 38