Oral History Program Steve Rush Interviewed by Alyssa Kammerman 29 January 2021 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Steve Rush Interviewed by Alyssa Kammerman 29 January 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: Rush, Steve, an oral history by Alyssa Kammerman, 29 January 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 Steve Rush. It was conducted on January 29, 2021 at the Stewart Library. Rush discusses his involvement with the Hill/DDO'95 group and some of the notable events, people, and circumstances surrounding the movement. The interviewer is Alyssa Kammerman. Sarah Langsdon is also present. AK: Today is January 29, 2021. We are with Steve Rush, talking to him for the Base Realignment and Closure project. My name is Alyssa Kammerman and I'll be conducting the interview. With me is Sarah Langsdon. So, Steve, thank you for meeting with us today. SR: My pleasure. AK: For my first question, I’d like to get kind of a sense of where you were at during the 1995 BRAC round. From what I understand, you were working with Utah Power and Light. Is that correct? SR: Yes, I'm still with Rocky Mountain Power, which is the successor company. But I was the district manager in Layton for Utah Power and Light at the time. AK: Why did you choose to become a member of Hill/DDO'95? SR: I was asked to [laughs]. My boss was the area manager in Ogden. I had been involved with the Chamber of Commerce with the Ogden community before I took the job in Layton, so I knew all the key players. This, as you've probably figured out, was originally an Ogden/Weber County based group that was leading the charge on this. So, they reached out to me because I was involved with the Chamber in Layton, and I was involved with the base through my job in some 1 committees I served on. I was kind of the logical Davis County guy to bring on board. AK: So, I'm curious, why did Utah Power and Light choose to give time and resources to this? What would be the impact on Utah Power and Light if the base had closed? SR: Economic self-interest is a really good starting point. The base, it's much bigger now, but it was certainly very large, had a huge impact on the economy of northern Utah. So, we looked at it. From a pragmatic sense, you wanted to do it. Then the other [reason], we just determined it was the right thing to do. We said, “This is a team event.” We've got Defense Depot Ogden in Ogden, and we had Hill Air Force Base just south. The interesting thing, and you probably heard this, was the people that bought the land to put on Hill were originally businesspeople from Ogden and Weber County. So, there's just a strong connection that way. AK: Were you the only one from Utah Power and Light who joined Hill/DDO'95? SR: No, Lee Carruthers was also part of it. He was my boss in Ogden. I had a lot more knowledge of the Air Force and the base than Lee did, but he was definitely in there as a key force for my company when it came to getting resources and bringing money to it. The other thing I'd mention is I'm an Air Force brat. I grew up, my dad was a maintainer in the Air Force, and we traveled all over. He moved us down from Mountain Home, Idaho so he could take a job in this area and ultimately worked at Hill. AK: From my research in the Hilltop Times, it looks like you volunteered to head a fact-finding committee to kind of find ways to strengthen weaknesses at Hill, 2 because there were some areas that Hill Air Force Base was “marginal” in during 1993. Can you tell me a little bit about what that looked like? SR: Sure. You probably heard this name during the other interviews, but Assistant Secretary of the Air Force Rudy de Leon came to Hill Air Force Base, and we met him on the base. Base leadership was there and our community folks. So, we were talking to him, and basically our approach was, “You guys are crazy. Why would you close such a great installation?” There was five depots at the time, and the rumor was they were going to go to three. We didn’t have a lot of facts early on, just what we thought we knew. So, we pressed Rudy about, “Why in the world would you do it?” He said, “Look, more bases are closed by encroachment than will ever be closed by BRAC and base closure realignment stuff.” So, that statement, we got to thinking about that. When Hill was put in as a bomber base back in the 1940s, there was nothing around it. When I moved to Layton in 1990 and took the district manager job, there was still very little. But in the three years leading up to this moment, people had started building homes and doing stuff and getting closer to the base, so that encroachment comment really struck a chord with us. That’s when Vickie, who was our chair, tasked me to take a look at encroachment and some other things and figure out what the heck we needed to do. AK: Why was encroachment such a big deal that it could close down a base? SR: Noise complaints, safety. Have either one of you been up there for an air show or been on the base or anything like that? So, you have a runway, and on the end 3 of it, you have what's called a CZ, a Crash Zone. It's called that for a reason. Takeoffs and landings are the most dangerous part of flying. We all understand that. Then there's APZ One, APZ Two: Accident Potential Zone One and Two. They extend to the north and to the south, and they had been set aside, but not being rigorously enforced. Then there was folks starting to come in much closer around the edges of that. So, we took a look, and I reached out to Scott Carter. Scott was the city planner for Layton City. A very smart, capable guy. The other key person I reached out to was Wilf Sommerkorn, and he was the Davis County planner. They were the professional experts on land use. I reached out to them and said, "Gentlemen, we've got to take a look at this and come up with a plan, because we're going to be loved to death here by the neighbors if we're not careful." AK: So, you reached out to them to figure out how to work with the city planners in order to keep encroachment from overwhelming the base? SR: Correct. What we did is determine that there are always allowed land uses and some that are not allowed. So, we just took a look at what Layton and the surrounding communities—and on the north end it would have been South Weber—had in the way of land use. They went, did research, took a look at the federal guidelines, took a look at what the Air Force was reviewing and what would be an impact on them. Between us, we put together a strategy that says we have got to change the zoning. We have got to come up with a plan that allows certain uses. The short version of that is: great uses around the end of the runways and close in, 4 for noise, are golf courses and cemeteries, for obvious reasons. Beyond that, it's light manufacturing, then heavier manufacturing, then commercial, and then residential. There are certain things you can do to mitigate and meet code that comes down from the feds and the state codes. So, they were the experts. Once we came up with a strategy, we determined that, if I come to you and say “We're going to change the use of your property,” in legal terms, that's a taking. You have given up some rights and some potential benefits. So, we took a look at that and came up with a strategy, worked with the state attorney general's office, and drew up some legislation and a statute that we work with the Utah State Legislature and the AG's office. Once we determined that, we said, “Well, taking involves money.” So, that led to us working with the legislature and key legislators in Weber and Davis County. The first ask that we came up with was 12 million dollars. I got to tell you, in 1993, 1994, or 1995, that was real money. It's still real money, but it was really real money at the time. We had the benefit of Representative Marty Stevens as the speaker of the House at the time. He was out of Farr West. We worked really closely with Marty and key legislators and showed them what we were proposing, built the case for it and the ask for the legislature. This, to me, was one of the really interesting stories, because you've got a lot of legislators with other needs around the state. You’re not the only one in there with your hand out. So, we had that to deal with, went to multiple meetings with committees and stuff. When Speaker Stevens presented this on the floor of the Capitol, it was a big press deal, and they had everybody there. One of my 5 favorite reporters of all time, Rod Decker, was there. It's the first time I got to meet Rod. I'm sitting politely quiet up in the audience, and the speaker is making the case, and Rod goes on his usual attack. “This is a boondoggle; why are you just wasting money on stuff like this?” He just went on and on. Marty looked up in the audience and went, [points then beckons] "You." So, I got a chance to go down and take on Rod Decker on the floor, live. That was an interesting experience. It actually went well. Congressman Hansen was also sitting there, so he came up and provided support at the time. Then Rod turned to us at the end of that and then invited us to go on his Sunday night show and answer questions for the TV audience on that same thing. So, it was one of those—you know, as a guy just off the street doing this, it was a pretty interesting sequence of events. What came of it ultimately is the legislature approved the 12 million dollars. That was the key thing. So, what we had to do at that point is you've got to apply that. We'd taken a look, done the triage, and said, “We're going to start changing the zoning.” If you're a large developer who's planned on putting in high-density housing, and now you're going to be told all you can do is light industrial or something, [then it’s] “Okay, what is the settlement?” There was a lot of time working with attorneys and in the AG's office and working on that. But over time, we were able to do that. We worked with—I'm trying to remember the federal agency, Federal FHA, I think—and determined, if you're already there, what mitigation efforts 6 could you do? Sound comes in through vents, doors, windows. So, we worked and provided some support so there could be some mitigation for stuff like that for folks who are already there. Or if you wanted to build maybe a little bit closer, what measures could you take that would still qualify it and not create a problem with encroachment on the base? AK: We heard a story about someone buying up land in order to avoid some of the encroachment issues. Do you know who that was? SR: You know, there's a couple of legislators that come to mind, and landowners. I don't know for sure. I don’t know if others had specific names that they laid out there or not. I'm almost a little reluctant to go there, because it's a vague recollection of who it was. I know Barlow's and Love's come to mind, as they were both in the legislature and they both owned a lot of land there. I think the state is dealing with the Love's right now a little bit further down, where they have a car refurbishment place and they've been trying to put higher density and do some stuff in there, despite the fact it had already been compensated. So, those come to mind. But again, that is my vague recollection. So, yeah, huge asterisk [laughs]. AK: What do you remember about the elementary school that needed to be moved? SR: Okay. Private school. It's down there, I can't remember the road. It's the one immediately to the south below where the farms and stuff is. As we took a look at it, it was not in the APZ or the CZ, but it was certainly in the area where the jets come off there and bank hard, and it was in the area where it really should not be, as far as the rules we'd laid out for the land use. So, worked with those folks. 7 That actually ended up being more of a legal deal with the folks in the AG's office and others working with them. But ultimately, we were able to reach an agreement, and they shut the school down. The building is still there and everything, I think they farm on it. But the children, it was just not the right thing to do to leave it there. They pressed long and hard, they'd obviously been there a long time, and I think they were probably the most impacted individuals by the effort. But we just determined that is one risk we cannot take. We've gone to all this trouble; we're spending all this money. We had to go back to the legislature after a couple of years because costs escalated. You know, you go through litigation, you do everything, and we ended up going back for an additional three million, so ultimately we had 15 million. I think part of that money was to take care of the school issue, because they did not go quietly into the night [laughs]. We understood. They'd been there a long time. AK: Could I get the name of the elementary school? SR: I could get it for you. I don't know it off the top of my head. I’d tell you who could answer it in a heartbeat would be Scott Carter. He's a Layton City planner. AK: I’d heard a little bit about the community support of encroachment, where some people talked about how the sound of the base is “the sound of freedom.” Can you tell me a little more about the community’s sentiment and any support that came from them? SR: Sure. The community sentiment was overwhelmingly in favor of keeping the base open. Just a combination of support to the military, a sense of pride, economic 8 common sense. We had a couple of times when we had the BRAC commissioners come in—and probably Vickie had a much clearer recollection on this—but when they came to Hill and when they went to DDO—we don't want to leave out Defense Depot Ogden on this, it was the same way. People lined the streets, flags, it was pretty dramatic. The community support was overwhelming. When we reached out and said, “We need to show not just 10 or 12 or 15 of us showing up in here and talking. They need to understand how much the community supports this.” What was interesting is, in a couple of the places that ultimately closed, Sacramento in particular, the businesspeople and the elected folks really wanted to keep it open, but there was not a great upswelling of support. I think it was a bit the same way in San Antonio. So, I think that we stood out in that regard. The press was very supportive. We had the leadership on the base, as much as they could legally do. They have to walk a fine line on stuff like that. But absolutely, positively, the people from the community, when we reached out and said, “We need school kids, we need balloons, we need flags, we need all that stuff,” we had absolutely no trouble getting support for a couple of big events like that. It was driven very much by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission. Those people needed to viscerally feel what was going on. AK: So, speaking of that, I had read that there were two visits to Hill Air Force base. There was the May 1995 visit, where the commissioners came to the base and there were people lining the streets, but there's also a December 1994 visit 9 where the commissioners mainly came to get to know the community and they didn't visit the base. Do you remember anything about that? SR: I do not. I think probably Vickie and a couple of others would be a better source on that. That one I’m not recalling. I’m sure it took place. Like I said, this 25, 27 years is [shakes head and exhales]. AK: For sure. I had just learned about that, so I haven't asked Vickie about it yet. SR: Yeah. My guess is the woman doesn’t forget a thing, so [laughs], and puts it into context. AK: So, tell me a little bit more about what you were involved in to help with preparing for the May 1995 visit? SR: Well, again, my role obviously was land use. We also had the Utah Test and Training Range, and the UTTR is a monster component of this. Somewhere along the way, and I can’t give you the exact date stamp, but it came down to us as a committee and Congressman Hansen saying to the Air Force, “If you close Hill, you can kiss the UTTR goodbye.” The governor and everybody lined up: our congressional delegation, Senator Hatch, Senator Bennett, Jim Hansen. Everyone was united on that. We’re playing hardball. The UTTR is an irreplaceable asset. It’s just unbelievable on so many levels. I spent a lot of time dealing with encroachment involving the Utah Test and Training Range. Ivan Flint, who’s unfortunately not with us, he and I were assigned to join a group called the Southwest Defense Alliance. It was originally driven by California interests, and then Nevada, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and ultimately Texas wanted to come on board. The purpose was to recognize 10 national assets that were irreplaceable. When they’re gone, they’re gone. So, I was our lead on that. We visited governors and we visited key people around, and that was linked very much directly to encroachment and protecting the flying mission and the necessary things for it to continue on there. So, I’m not sure what the question was you asked, but I kind of segued on that. AK: That was helpful, too. My question was regarding what you helped out with in preparation for the commissioners' visit. SR: Yeah. So again, just part of the team. You know, brainstorming. Again, we always wanted to have key talking points. You've got a limited time and they don't need a lot of fluff. You've got to get right to it. So, between Mike Pavich— I'm not sure how much people have raved about Mike, for him to have retired as a two-star out of Sacramento, which was targeted after he left there, and to come here to the community and to be our first and only paid person at the time, was invaluable and unbelievably important. He could talk the inside Air Force jargon, and the Air Force people like Pat Condon and the others of the world, were under gag orders and very strict. So, having Mike join us and tell us what he could from a legal standpoint, and be our staffer, was unbelievably important. When we took a look, we knew that people at their bases—you know, we’re all rational, but we’re also emotional. So, what do you do to resonate with these commissioners and help them kind of cement what—it's fine you got your talking points, your bullet points and everything, but what do we do that's going to resonate with them and that'll stick with them when they leave here? If in the back of their mind is, "God, San Antonio, Sacramento, they're lukewarm at best. 11 But Utah, they're all in in making sure this mission stays here and supports the Air Force.” So, I think that would probably be what we were trying to do through those preparations. AK: Were you there at the airport to help pick the BRAC commissioners up and drive them through the crowds and everything? SR: I’m trying to remember. I know I was here standing at the gate and everything else. I cannot remember if I was at the airport or not. I had too many trips, too many places. I’m sorry. AK: Busy times. Did you have any involvement specifically with helping to save DDO? SR: Yes, absolutely. What people forget, and one of your questions was, "Did we toss them to the wolves?” No, I was all in on protecting DDO. It was Army. It was a very unique installation. The problem at the end of the day was it just wasn't big enough and important enough to the Army, where they had to close some stuff down. So, it was just a casualty. We tried to make the case that storing stuff there for the Army—which is basically what they did—was so important that it couldn't be consolidated somewhere else. They had rail access, they had the ground, they had all the history and everything, but at the end, the commissioners just determined that wasn't enough. But all of us were all in. There was nobody that I remember thinking that the Army and Defense Depot Ogden was not important. Again, Ogden was the original driver of our committee, and that was visceral for a lot of people, because it had always been there and was a part of the community. 12 So ultimately, getting commitments that there would be reuse money and we'd be able to kind of go down that path. Fortunately, it's worked out great, but there was no certainty at the time at all. We had absolutely no idea, because our experience as we studied across the country what had happened with previous BRACs, most of the places became smoking craters of economic inactivity. Didn't want to delude ourselves that it was going to be something magical and it would all work out. So, no, we fought as hard as we could on that one. AK: What were some things you were involved in specifically with helping with DDO? SR: Again, most of my efforts, to be honest with you, were geared toward Hill, the encroachment, and I was spending a huge amount of time on that. But when we put together the support activities, and then just internally providing my two cents on things. But I won't claim to have been on the front vanguard on the DDO piece of it. SL: So, you didn't come in in time for the Tanzi basement secret meeting? SR: Oh, yeah. SL: Oh, were you? Oh okay. SR: Oh yeah. So, like I said, I was brought in after the group had started, but I was in almost from the inception. Vickie reminds me I'm not a plank holder; I wasn't there from day one, you know. Dave and Deborah Tanzi were great friends. I was an honorary commander to Dave Tanzi when he was the commander of the 419th fighter wing. He was kind enough to arrange for me to fly in the back seat of an F-16. So, yeah, I was there. I got to tell you, that was one of the singularly most unique and interesting events I have ever been involved in. Private 13 residence, you've got the governor, you've got four-star general over Air Force Materiel Command, you've got our entire delegation, and you got security out the wazoo. Drive up there, go down into their basement, and their basement was huge. It was opulent and it was very nice. It was just an amazing, amazing circumstance. My mind is just absolutely blank on the four-star general commander's name. SL: Yates? SR: Yates, thank you. Ron Yates. Him sitting in the middle and us sort of a circle around him. You can imagine how for most of us that would be daunting, to say the least. Man's unflappable. I got a chance to know him over time through Vickie. So, when you've got two U.S. senators and your congressman and the group of us, it was a remarkable experience. His candor was off the chart. “San Antonio is the largest employer of Hispanic workforce. Sacramento is in California; do the delegate count. That's just reality, and you're going to close." That was the upshot of it. He put just a teeny bit of lipstick on it, but there wasn't a lot. Everyone got a chance to press him hard and talk to him, but at the end of the day, he just said, “This is an economic and a political decision.” So, I don't know if that's consistent [with what the others have said], but you talk about an eye-opener, to hear it in such stark terms. So, we'd been galvanized and mobilized, and we took it up to another level at that point. AK: Could you tell me a little more about that? I'm curious about what that meant to “take it to another level.” 14 SR: Well, again, I think that's probably about the time that UTTR became a major bargaining chip, because the honest truth is, if you do count representatives in the House, Utah had three, California and Texas. Again, you throw in, without getting too deep, the Hispanic workforce. I mean, it was the single biggest employer in the DOD, and certainly the Air Force. So, you just take a look at that and say, “Holy mackerel.” Ultimately it came down to, what are we doing so that no one can claim that we're being encroached upon? We have got to absolutely take that off the table. They've made statements about it that are incorrect or only partially correct, and we're going to remedy it. We bought people out, we changed the business rules of who could be within it [the encroachment area], and we pushed really, really hard on that. At the end of the day, the range would be the ace in the hole. But it was never certain. I mean, it was probably a huge day of relief when we got the official word on that. Here's the other thing: California and Texas, their legislatures, their governors did not step up in a big way like ours did. We were able to provide unified political support from the governor, to the legislature, to the county commissioners, to the mayors, to those of us working a piece of this, including the land use. I can't downplay that, because it was critical. Other places didn't heed that, and in later BRACs and other issues, they did get certain missions and that type of thing. AK: At the event that we had back in October, you guys had some interesting stories about going out to Washington to lobby or present— 15 SR: [Laughs] Yes. AK: —including Vickie McCall telling that one general to sit down. Could you tell me a little bit more about some of those things? SR: Oh, my gosh. So, the first time I was ever in the Pentagon was the trip that all of us went back. Mike Pavich had just been hired by us as our executive director, our paid guy, and he was within a one-year restraining time frame, so he could not be in the meeting with us. So, we were on, I think, the third floor, where the Chief of Staffs are at. So, we had Chief of Staff Tony McPeak—what a piece of work [laughs]. 'Bout this tall and just all fighter pilot and all direct. We had, oh man, we had at least 13, 15, 17 of us, whatever our number was, around a big old, huge, long conference room table, as you can imagine for the chief of staff for the Air Force. First time I'd ever seen a four-star general in a circumstance like that. Came in, and all those bright, shiny stars. Around the perimeter of the room, lined with chairs all the way around, one-star, two-star, and three-star generals. It was hard to breathe in there. Vickie was our Chair, and she's sitting side by side with General McPeak. The rest of us are sitting along the table with all the general’s staff. Tony McPeak knew that he was coming in there to give us a briefing on Hill's mission and BRAC. Instead, he gave us basically a PR piece of pablum, talked high level, yada, yada, yada. I don't remember. But it was all it was just to make us feel good that we'd been there and met the four-star and that he took the time to be with us. Then without warning, he just starts pushing his chair up and [starting to stand] he gets about this far. Vickie turns to him and—my remembrance of the 16 words—she smiled very sweetly and said, "Sit down, General. We're not through with you yet." You could hear the air suck out of that room, between us and the officers. God bless her. Blue eyes, sweet smile. Tony looked at her and went, "Oh," and he just sat back in the chair. We had him for another 30 minutes or so, and we quizzed him very specifically about the stuff that was on our minds at the time. I don't remember any of those questions because I was still thinking, "I'm going to be shot!" So, we finish, we go outside. Mike Pavich is there, and we relate this to him, and I watch the color drain out of his face. He goes, "You did what?" It was one of the most amazing things. But I'll tell you what, it was unbelievably effective. She, and we, got the attention of the Air Force leadership and got a chance to talk about what we were doing, why Hill was so important, how the state and the community stood on that. Jim Hansen was obviously in that room, too. Jim was our top cover on everything. I mean, he was the guy. So, yeah, I don't know how that matches up with other recounts of that, but like I said, I will never in this lifetime have another experience like that. I've had the good fortune, I could say “good fortune,” of being back in the Pentagon quite a few times. There had been a mid-air crash over the Grand Canyon and people were killed. It was one of the small planes, sightseeing, and flew into another plane and they were killed. The Sierra Club took it upon themselves to determine that it was because there wasn't enough government 17 oversight about flying over federal land. They proposed that there would be no planes over federal land flown below 500 feet AGL, Above Ground Level. This became a huge issue for us because, the Utah Test and Training Range, you train the way you fight, and I guarantee you our guys are well below 500 feet a lot of the time. They're either at 35,000 feet or they're in the dirt. So, we took a look at that and determined that is absolutely insane, and we've got to nip that one in the bud, because that would kill training missions and Air Force readiness and all that. So, Vickie and I ended up going back to Congress. We walked the hallowed halls, we knocked on every door of anyone that was involved with House and Senate Armed Services. One that really sticks in my mind was Senator McCain. Senator McCain, Navy pilot, shot down. He always had a Navy adjutant as his legislative person that worked with him as his assistant, and we could not get an audience with the senator. He had his guy hold us off. When we talked to him, he said, "The senator understands your position; he agrees with the other and doesn't think that what you're saying is correct and important." He was actually one of the champions on that legislation. So, I ended up going back at least once, maybe twice, testifying before Jim Hansen's land use committee. We lobbied everybody on the planet on that one, and we ultimately prevailed because it just was stupid. No other way to describe it. It was just the Sierra Club out of control. We dealt with them a lot over the years. I don't have a huge use for them because of what I had to deal 18 with on military-related stuff over time. So, like I said, that was important to us because the direct linkage was UTTR and readiness. Another one that Vickie probably told you about, I'm trying to remember more of the specifics on it. We had to reach an agreement with folks inside the Air Force hierarchy, senior civilian staff, on some encroachment land use stuff. They were trying to put—I can't remember what the hell they were trying to put out there. Fred Pease was the guy internally at the Air Force, and Vickie and I grew to really have a strong dislike for Fred. We brought him out and met with him at Hill. He was requested by senior Air Force leaders to join us. He just had kind of a different understanding of what was important to the flying mission. So, we had to sort of parry with him a lot. I distinctly remember we sat in the officer's club at Hill. Fred came out, we had lunch with him. We were kind of talking through stuff, and he was feeding us pablum. I was being a little too nice, I guess. So, we pressed him on our issues and made him well aware that, “We are not going to let this go, and we'll take it to whatever levels we've got to, and our congressional folks are going to be on you like a rash, so just get that straight." We left the meeting and Vicki said, "What's the matter with you? I would have slit his throat" [laughs]. I told her, "All I could think of was we're playing good cop, bad cop." She was not being literal about that, of course. Jim Hansen reached an agreement with Fred that I wish I could remember. The people inside the 388th fighter wing range group, Lighty Lightfoot, Colonel Lightfoot, called us up and said, "You're not going to believe 19 this. Somebody has changed the website, and they have made that range available, so it's going to be looked at as recreation." I'm just trying to remember the specifics on that. I wish I could. He called us, Vickie and I went directly to Jim Hansen, he called the direct line of the chief of staff. He was traveling somewhere in Europe or Asia, so he got a hold of the vice chief. He told it to him, and the vice chief said, "He did what?" Fortunately, we had taken a screenshot on the computer of what was up there, and by the time that the vice chief got the information and did some research, it had been pulled down. The only thing we had was the proof that we had done the screenshot on this thing. Did Vickie talk about that? AK: No. SR: Oh, you'll want to revisit her because she'll remember the exact details. But it was unbelievably important. It was tied very much to potential environmental things that would interfere with the flying mission. The Army has an awful lot of stuff out there, too, between their drone mission and the weapons testing that takes place out there. We don't talk about it an awful lot, but if the guys are going to go over and drop ordnance in Syria or someplace, you don't want it to be your first time. Do a lot of training. They bring in fighter wings, bomber wings, tankers from all over the country, and actually foreign, and get out there and mix it up and train. You've got to have the ability from the dirt up to the top ceiling to do all this stuff, and you've got to play nicely with the airlines, and you've got to play nicely with the Army. There's an awful lot of constituents on this. 20 I think Vickie may have mentioned nuclear waste, and she asked me to make sure I talk specifically about that, because I took the lead on that for us. What had happened—I’m a utility guy—a consortium of electric utilities needed to store spent nuclear waste. You know, you use it to generate the electricity, it's got to be sealed up properly. That's got to be put somewhere. Well, the Goshute Indians were in dire need of revenue. These two got together, and they were working very strongly, rapidly, aggressively toward putting in these casks. They were cylinders, quite tall, that would have been stored out there. It's one thing to be stored out there, but they were stored in the low-level approach to the south part of the range. I mentioned the Air Force has got to play really nice with Delta Airlines and everybody else, and so you've got certain quarters that are defined. Also, if you're flying low, you've got mountains, so you've got to have a place. So, that low-level approach that they used with, I think we figured 10,000 flights a year that would go through that one area. It was a huge number. The Goshutes, God bless them, they were just trying to find a way to bring some cash to the table and help the tribe. So, we took a look at that and said, “This is insane.” By the way, it was post 9/11 on this particular one. We took a look at it, and the utilities were assuring everyone that these casks could take anything. It didn't matter what kind of a hit, no one would be able to accidentally destroy it, spill the nuclear waste. Oh, by the way, this area is west of Salt Lake. Prevailing winds are from west to east, so this would be an epic, just huge catastrophe [if it did spill]. 21 So, we took a look at it, and one of our members reached out to a university. Hugo Horseman, he's a former fighter pilot, bomber pilot, flew in B-1s as well as F-16s and A-10s. He took a look at it, got a study done for us that pretty much said nothing's impenetrable and these are at risk. We obviously never publicized that. I got with my brother, who was a founding member of SEAL Team Six, and some of what they did was called red cell activity. Penetrate. Go into a place that's supposedly impenetrable, a Russian sub yard, for instance, or into our own installations like nuclear power plants and other stuff. I asked him, "You've trained a lot out there, you and Delta and the others. Could you get to that and could you take it out?" He just broke out laughing. He just said, "In a heartbeat. I mean, that's ludicrous. There is absolutely no way in that location with the kind of security." So, we went to work with the governor and key legislators, and said, “This is a nonstarter, but the Goshutes need some help.” So, they arranged an economic package, and I can't remember the details of it, but it was basically “in lieu of this. This is not going to happen here.” It was a very unique learning experience because, on the surface, it didn't look like a bad idea at all. I could understand as a utility guy why they were trying to do that. But it would have been just a catastrophe waiting to happen. So, just again, Utah Defense Alliance taking the lead on something. That's kind of been our role, just out there as the guardians on stuff. This was postBRAC, but it was very much "keep the range viable" and kind of work through 22 that process. So, how close that matched up with Vickie's story, I'm not sure [laughs]. SL: It matches up with Steve Petersen’s story. SR: Oh, okay. SL: Yeah, Steve talked about it. SR: Steve was incredibly important. He was the key staffer for Jim, and we worked with Steve all the time. I kind of forgot to mention him, but he was vitally important. AK: I do want to go back to the Utah Defense Alliance in a minute here, because I do want to hear more about the transition from Hill/DDO'95 to UDA. But before I do, I just want to know, once it was announced that Hill Air Force Base was safe from BRAC 1995, did you have any kind of celebration at all? SR: Yeah, and I don't remember the specifics of it. I guarantee a number of us had some good beverages, because it was unbelievable. Everyone was invested emotionally in this. I don't remember the specifics, you'll have to count on Vickie and Mike and others for that, but the answer is yes. It had been so long, we fought so hard, and so many people involved. I wish I could remember it, but I'm not sure if I remember last year's birthday. AK: [Laughs] I understand. Do you know if the community did any kind of celebrations? SR: I don't. I'm just drawing a blank on that. It's kind of surprising; you'd think that the celebration piece would be so critical. What I remember is the steps that we've done since to keep Air Force leadership engaged and not let them lose sight of 23 some stuff. I can talk about that real briefly, I'm kind of wandering. But I wish I could tell you more. But I'm sure, like I said, Vickie and Mike and others would be better able to. AK: That’s ok. I do want to hear about what Hill/DDO’95 went on to do after BRAC was over. SR: Yeah. So, people said, "Well, base closure is gone, why do you guys even exist? Why do you need funding from the legislature? Why are you still out there?" So, what we have done religiously is protect the mission. We’ve got General Sullivan, General Condon, General Pavich, and a group of us that have been around for a really, really long time. I serve on two Air Force committees at the four-star general level. I'm on Air Force Materiel Command, which is the command that's over all the depot stuff, and they own all the depots and that type of thing around the world. When Les Lyles was here, I got to know him as a one-star, as the vice commander, and then as a two-star. We liked each other. We got along, we played golf, we skied, and I got to know Mina and the family. So, Les left here as a two-star, went to a couple of other jobs, then he was vice chief of staff of the Air Force—we met him in that role—and then he was commander of Air Force Materiel Command. He’d determined that the group that Air Combat Command had that Vickie is a charter member of—and lifelong, she'll still be serving when she's buried. They have used her as the ongoing mentor for everybody that's come along, and they keep her involved. So, Les reached out to a couple of us and said, “I'm going to stand up a group like Air Combat Command Commanders 24 Group, and we're going to call it the Community Leader Program, CLP. I want you guys to be the original members of that.” So, that was quite the honor, and got a chance to stay involved that way. By going back to Wright-Patterson—you know, they had three depots, but there’s a lot of others. They've got all the test missions for the Air Force, they've got nuclear enterprise under it—not the actual launching of the missiles, but the other storage and maintenance and all that. So, it is a tremendous mission. I've just accumulated a lot of knowledge through people like Tom Miner and the generals and just being out there a lot. I'm a groupie; they have to haul me off the base [laughs]. So, I stayed involved that way. When we got to looking, we realized that the couple of commanders of Air Combat Command had not come west of the Mississippi and visited Hill, and you snooze, you lose -type thing, if you don't get people to pay attention and be aware of what you've got and what your mission is and everything. So, we made a point of starting to invite four-star generals from both Air Force Materiel Command and from Air Combat Command to try to get them out to events. I had one of those "aha" moments one day and I said, "I got counterparts from the company that are involved in Utah County, and they do the Stadium of Fire. What an amazing patriotic event. Wouldn't it be cool if we could get them to honor these four-star generals?" So, I reached out to my friend and to the community down there, and they says "Hell, yes!" You know, Stadium of Fire and all that. We worked with the 388th fighter wing and made sure there was always a flyby, and that the four-star general understood that that fighter wing is really, 25 really important. Don't mess with it. So, we had several of them come down. I think we did three or four years and then it sort of went by the wayside. But it was an amazing event. Vickie can tell the story better than I can, because I don't remember two commanders, our wing commander and the four-star. The four-ship of the F-16s were coming in from the south. The Stadium of Fire, it’s a dome, and you’re in here like this, so you cannot see out very far because that event horizon's cut off, but we could hear. The announcer was talking about that the four-ship was coming in, and they're going to do their flyby and all that. So, they came in and just as they got into the stadium coming in, they should have been this way; they were over here. Well, there's a huge parking lot next to the stadium that is really, really well lit, and they were locked-in on the parking lot. At the last minute, the lead went, "Oh, shit," and they start sliding sideways, the four-ship, to come over the stadium. The four-star turned and looked down at our wing commander and just went [shakes head]. This guy was a putz. I’m trying to remember who he was, he was not real charming, but he'd come out, and there were repercussions from that. But again, it's the ongoing mission: What do we do to keep our congressional delegation, key Air Force leaders, and other folks that we've got to influence so they understand? The most important thing is they just have to know what we do and understand the missions so that when someone else is whispering in their ear they think, “No, that's not such a good idea. This is what we've got at Hill and what they bring to it on everything out there.” Anyway, I 26 don't know if she [Vickie] had mentioned that Stadium of Fire story, but like I said, it's part of the ongoing [efforts]. We go back, walk the hallowed halls, go into the Pentagon, Vickie and Kevin in particular. Tage is awesome. He is a perfect lead person as our chair of Utah Defense Alliance. Vickie is the heart and soul though, to be honest with you. She just has so many connections that never go away. Just a quick sidebar on her: They reached out, the commander of Air Combat Command, said, "The Brits are trying to start a group like our commanders' group that represents all the Air Combat Command bases,” and Vickie had chaired for ten years, I'm the alternate on that committee. "The Brits are trying to emulate what we've got. I need you, Vickie, to go with a couple of other people and be their mentor and do that." So, she got a chance to go spend a couple of weeks over there while they were doing air shows and meeting with all the British military leadership and stuff like that. Again, I just cannot emphasize how important having relationships and staying in touch with people is, because those people come about every two years, three years, four years, whatever, and they're gone, and you've got the next group. They don't often have a lot of corporate, because you have no knowledge and history, because you have no idea where they came from. That's been the ongoing thing, is to keep a couple of us on the Air Force Materiel Command on the Depot side. Like I said, I'm Vickie’s backup on Air Combat Command, and then she and Tage are on the Chief’s group, and it’s the 27 same type of deal. She's been—more than Tage because she's been at it longer—has flown into battle zones during live fire. We get new leaders at the base, some of them come in like our current colonel: wonderful lady, very smart, zero background in this kind of stuff. So, it's very incumbent upon us to meet with her, and she's been great about meeting with us. She meets with our executive committee from UDA, and we just kind of talk about some of these issues. What's important? How can we help? What can we bring to it for you? Can we help you with the folks that are wearing the stars? That type of thing, because of the relationship. So, to kind of keep coming back to why UDA is still around and what we're doing, that's a big part of it right there. When people talk about taking missions away from us, we sort of take a look and say, "Okay, where are you going to take it to? Why are they a better choice?" If we don't reach the same conclusion, it's, "Oh, hell no. We're going to go to the mat on this one." We do, and typically prevail. We've gone through this with the A-10s and maintenance on that, some missile work, the list just kind of goes on and on. You probably learned that the base is the depot that does 100% of all Air Force landing gear and a bunch of stuff like that, and they also do 70% of DOD for things like that. But there's other missions that could go somewhere, and we just always take a look at it and say, "Walk us through why that's a good idea." You know, we don't get the final say, of course. I understand that. But we do have the ability to reach out and influence along that line. AK: Kind of advocate for— 28 SR: Absolutely. Yeah. Most of us on UDA serve, like I said, in some capacity under a commander program. Top Utah Military Affairs Committee, TUMAC, is designed to provide support for the airmen. What do we do for quality of life? How can we help make things better for you if you're working, living here, that type of thing? I won't say it's an offshoot of UDA, but we sort of work hand in hand and there's an awful lot of overlap between the two committees. AK: In 1996, you were a part of what looks like three different groups: Ogden, Layton, North Davis Military Affairs Committees. SR: Yeah. AK: Are those three different groups? SR: Yeah. AK: Okay. Was that affiliated with UDA at all? SR: No, but it overlaps. A couple of people that are involved came in because of that. So, I was involved with the Military Affairs Committee with the Ogden Chamber when I was there. When I went to Layton, my good friend Linda Kelly, who runs Layton Hills Mall, she had been in Ogden as well, running a mall there and was involved. She moved to Layton and had the Layton Hills Mall. I was the manager there. We didn't have a military affairs committee, so we thought, “You know, we’re going to replicate what Ogden's doing.” We put it together and it was small initially, and it grew over time to where it was basically pretty close to the equivalent of what was going on in Ogden. Then the base reached out to us and said, “Would you merge these? Could you do something? Because we're getting too many requests for our time and presence.” So, we did that. 29 But a lot of the folks originally get involved with the military through the Military Affairs Committee, and once they get some experience and determine “I want to be really engaged,” or we look at them and say that person's got skills, talents or whatever that we can bring into UDA, so we don't just get stagnant. We’ve got a couple of us who have been there from the very beginning, but there’s also been new members coming along over time, and they usually come through the Military Affairs Committee. Like I said, it’s quality of life, this is all about mission and support that way. AK: I also read that you became an honorary commander for the 388th fighter wing. SR: Yes. AK: Could you tell me a little bit about what that entails? Where does that fit into our timeline? SR: Yeah. I mentioned I had been an honorary commander with the 419th fighter wing, the reserve wing, and I got asked if I would serve with the 388th. "Well, yeah!" [laughs] So, what they do in those honorary commander programs is you get paired with a person in leadership, whether it's a senior enlisted person like the chief, or you're with one of the squadron commanders, or you're with the commander or the vice commander. I was paired with Jim Post, and he was the vice commander at the 388th fighter wing. You know, it's the luck of the draw. They get some of us that are pretty engaged and we get some of them that are really engaged. Jim Post was awesome. He's a treat. So, what that meant is I got invited, went to briefings that weren't classified, kind of brought my knowledge from the wing level versus somebody 30 that's down here with the squadron. You all get kind of a different perspective because everyone's got their role. If you're captain versus the colonel, type-thing. So, I got a chance to just see it from there. Like I said, I sat in with senior leaders a lot. I brought my experience through TUMAC and UDA and then my job. So, it's a chance to do that and just build relationships. Got a chance to fly again in the back of an F-16. Jim flew me, and one of the great experiences of all time. The lady that was over Questar Gas was involved with our group as an honorary commander, and she got to fly the same day that I did. So, we were out there over the desert playing a little bit. So anyway, there was that. But the most important part of it was just the perspective of understanding how leadership is seeing things. Challenges. What could we do to help in the community, or what were they doing that was really annoying? You're doing too much night flying, or people are not playing by the rules they're supposed to play by. So, yeah, I don't know what else to say about that other than it was just a great experience. It was a good learning one. Having been with the Reserves, you learn, because ultimately at the end of the day, they're both training to protect the nation, go to war if necessary, and they do fly together in combat. They deploy together and such, but they're different cultures. The reservists, a high percentage of them have got other jobs, they're airline pilots or whatever, and they come in and then fly. They just have a different perspective. They have different funding streams. So, to be part of that and kind of understand that as a Utah Defense Alliance guy, it helped you really 31 understand, because it is different cultures and funding and all that. If you had no idea about that and you hadn't seen it up close, it wouldn't register. It came in really handy in one particular circumstance. The vice commander of Air Combat Command came out to visit Vickie and I in her living room, and it was Orville Wright. What a great name for an Air Combat Commander. Now he's a four-star and he’s over the Air Force Association. So, we met him when he was one-star and he was vice commander of ACC. He came out, and the issue was the 388th fighter wing, for political reasons, was not getting their number called to deploy. If you're a warfighter and you train all the time, and then you see the reservists getting their number called, [you get frustrated.] So, we asked Orville to come pay us a visit and sat and had a couple of beverages and chatted through this. What I had found out in talking to the people on the inside is the determining factor was that the 419th, because of their different funding stream, had different targeting capabilities. They had a more sophisticated attachment that went on the module that bolted onto the F-16. So, they had the ability to perform a mission that the 388th could not, even though they were the activeduty wing. This seems so counterintuitive, but because of the way they're funded, they were able to do this. So, we had come up with a bit of a compromise talking internally with the folks with some help from a couple of the insiders, and proposed it to Orville and said, "We really, really need you to intervene on this thing and help out, because 32 it's not good for your morale, it's not good for your readiness." He took it back to the boss, and we were able to succeed on that. Again, that was wearing a Utah Defense Alliance hat, and Vickie and I had our Air Combat Command hats on, because we're both on the committee there. So, so much overlap. I guess that's kind of the point I'm making here. But it's always amazing where something comes up that you get involved in and we can have a role as civilians on the outside on something like that. AK: Okay. So, I want to know a little bit about UDA's involvement with BRAC 2005. What did that look like? Were there any similarities or differences to BRAC’95? SR: We knew we were not on closure, so that gives you a different vantage point to look at it. We took it as we're not facing closure, but what missions might be at risk, and what missions might be opportunities? As we kind of took a look around at who might be losing and who might be gaining, it was a very different atmosphere because, again, we knew we were not going to be targeted. That that ship had sailed. So, we looked at it very much about keeping missions that made sense, and then, like I said, shopping and deciding if there was something else that really should be done here that was being done somewhere else. I don't have much more of a recollection than that. It was a hell of a relief to be in a role where you're not fighting for your life. I know we spent a lot of time working with Congress, we spent a lot of time in the Pentagon. But again, it was just very much about retention and preservation at that time. AK: Did you have any work that you gained because of that BRAC round? 33 SR: The answer is yes, but I'm trying to remember what it was. Mike Pavich would be a much better person to ask that question. Probably Kevin Sullivan would know, too. It's when you're the corporate guy, you're on the inside and you've got all that experience that you've grown up within that some things stand out a little better. I would ask those two. I think they would absolutely, positively be able to answer that question better. AK: Okay. Good to know. Do you happen to remember anything about the community involvement for BRAC 2005? Was it as extensive as BRAC'95? SR: No. We didn't have to rally and get the school kids out and the flags and all that, because, again, it was very much more of an insider fight. Fight is probably not even [the right word.] We just took a look and said, “We've got the nuclear mission, ICBM stuff. What makes sense?” I think what probably came out of that is we're doing Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent now, GBSD, and we have fought like the Dickens to keep that mission viable over time, the ICBM piece of it. We've done a great job of community support. You don't get any backlash about nukes or anything like that. Of course, we don't have the warheads here, but still. Reason doesn't always prevail over emotion on some things like that. The other is, we continued to protect the flying mission, to make sure that we were making everyone aware that encroachment was not an issue. I know we focused on some stuff on the range. Since then, as an offshoot of that, that range space has grown, the airspace has grown. Steve Peterson would be a really good resource on that. I'm involved, but again, the level of remembering the particulars of the details and the date stamp is where I get real sketchy. But we 34 took a look and said with the missions—That was before the F-35, but there were other platforms coming along, because of the distance you have to standoff between jets and targets and our jets coming at each other. You needed bigger air space. So, playing nice with the Army, who we support, but the mission up here is a whole lot bigger than what they've got, although Tooele and Dugway are critical. So, we were, I think, very much in that mode of “How do we just don't do anything to lose anything, and if it makes sense, bring it in?” I like to think of when did the F-35 work, early on, get determined that it was going to come to Hill? Because we built a range, we worked with the Air Force to get funding to put hangars for the F-22 maintenance and the F-35 maintenance on the base. We fought like the dickens to get those missions here. They would like to have gone somewhere else. So, I would link that to BRAC 2005 and on. It's just been one of those ongoing things. Absolutely, it made more sense by the time the F-35 came around to keep it here, because we do the depot maintenance on all the fighters. But the F-22 was absolutely more of a struggle because there were places that desperately wanted that mission and were trying to get it. So, that would have linked with this time frame and a little bit going forward after that. AK: Okay. Well, unless there’s more that you’d like to share, I just have one last question. SR: I don’t know. I'm sitting here, I just had a Jimmy Buffett song pop up in my head thinking about "some things I remember and some things I forgot" [laughs]. 35 AK: No, you did an incredible job. I've gotten a lot of really great information from this, so thank you. SR: Okay, well, thank you. Yeah, just try to free-flow it a little bit, and then you can sift through it. AK: No, it’s been very helpful, especially with the UDA side of things. So, thank you. SR: You're welcome. AK: My very last question is kind of a two-part question: What is the legacy of Base Realignment and Closure on Utah’s community as well as the Utah Defense Alliance? SR: What was the first part of that question again? AK: What was the legacy of BRAC, as a whole, on the Utah community? Maybe their support of the military…? SR: Yeah, I think it is clearly. First of all, you need to be ever vigilant, and part of that is what can happen in Congress, what can happen in the Pentagon, and what can happen locally. At a local level, there are always people that have got a better use of the land. You might get that faction that comes along and says “We're just not all that pro-military anymore and don’t like the noise.” There’s complaints about the F-35. The F-35 is louder. I learned an acronym that I didn't talk about, but going back to Wilf Sommerkorn and Scott Carter, Air Installation Compatible Use Zone, AICUZ. Got to know that one in my sleep. What that meant is, that's all of the things that apply to noise and type of use that is allowed or is considered to be an encroachment, and you start getting docked on that and they take a look, and 36 you get enough of those that build up and you've lost your mission, and it goes somewhere else. So, I think that the lesson is, don't ever let your guard down. We're not at DEFCON five or anything; we don't have an imminent attack. But the flip side is, you just don't want to get complacent, because there are always other communities, other states, that are looking for that kind of a mission that would love to have it. It's unlikely to lose the flying mission, but again, Beth Topa, who's a retired command chief for the 388th fighter wing, now works for Colonel Carroll Jenise, and she's dealing with community outreach. It's amazing how many noise complaints come in, and what always strikes me is the vast majority of the people that call them in are retired and they retired from the base. I find that so ironic. That got old and cranky and sort of forgot who paid the bills for a really, really long time. So, there's that piece of it, and, you know, just remembering a big part of what we do through Utah Defense Alliance is it aligns with the TUMAC mission, is take care of the care and feeding of the troops. You want them to want to come here, you want them to be glad they came here, you want them to have schools that they're proud to put their kids in, and all the things that go with that quality of life, because a big part of this workforce is retirees that choose to stay here or to come back. We work really, really hard. We've got legislation going right now tied to military retirement. I was on a call with the Northern Utah Chamber Coalition, it's Davis, Weber, Box Elder, and Cache Counties Chambers of Commerce. We were on a call with all of our 37 legislators this morning, and we do this monthly, and we have our internal meetings weekly. One of the big issues right now is paying for military retirement taxes. First blush, you say, “Why would you not charge them income tax on their retirement?” Well, that eight percent is a disincentive if you don't have to pay that in Texas, if you don't have to pay that in Oklahoma, you don't have to pay in these other places where these people with these skills go. So, we just remind people that if they don't come here, we haven't lost anything. If they do come here and they get a job that's paying them sixty, eighty, a hundred thousand dollars a year, we get income tax on that. We're just not taxing their retirement. You don't want to give them a disincentive. So, that's something we're very actively involved in right now. Again, that's Utah Defense Alliance, and so those kinds of things we've been working really closely. I mentioned I'm on Air Force Materiel Command's four-star CLP group. We have a great trade workforce in this state, good and well educated and everything, but we are woefully short on people with the software or the engineering skills. We're working extraordinarily hard with Weber State; we're working hard with the tech colleges and others about how do we get that pipeline? Or how do we reach out, recruit and bring others in here? UDA is right at the epicenter of that, because we've absolutely, positively got to be able to bring that skilled workforce, that talent pool. Brad Mortenson is heavily, heavily involved in this. Before him, you go back to his predecessors, Anne Millner was just off the chart. Unbelievably important. So, I guess I'll 38 probably leave it at that, unless something else pops in at the last minute here. But again, that's our future. How do we make sure that we've got the people that can provide the service and the skills that are needed there? AK: Well, thank you so much. That was excellent, I really appreciate it. If anything else, like you said, “pops up,” feel free to send us an email or whatever. We'd love to hear it. SR: I'd be happy to do that. Like I said, I got some people who I'd mentioned with a lot better memories on some of the specifics. AK: No, you shared a lot of amazing stuff I hadn't heard yet, so thank you. SR: Okay, you're welcome. 39