Former Air Base personnel reminisce during Loring open house weekend
LIMESTONE, Maine — Loring Air Force Base was thriving with activity this past weekend, despite being closed for over two decades. The base’s bi-annual open house brought a myriad of former military personnel to northern Maine, with some coming from as far away as Tennessee and Alaska.
While the event’s highlight was a flyover on Saturday afternoon, which featured a Boeing KC-135 and B-52, former airmen and civilian employees were able to relive their experiences by visiting the former base’s Heritage Center, looking at old photos and items, and meeting old friends.
“When this base shut down, it was like a city closing,” said William Cowan of Tennessee. “This was probably the largest strategic aircraft base in the country. As far as I know, other bases were not as large as this one.”
“It’s a shame to see it the way it is,” said Loring Heritage Center President Bill Ossenfort. “This was a community by itself years ago. You didn’t have to leave the base for anything. All your facilities – hospitals, dental services, and so forth, was right here on the base.”
Cuppy Johndro, co-coordinator of the weekend festivities, also has fond memories of working on the base.
“One of my favorite memories was being on one of the base sports teams,” Johndro said. “We couldn’t ever leave, but we would kick the heck out of other bases when they came. We rocked at sports, and we had parties at the officers club, the NCO club. The base was like a city. You could fill up on gas, do your shopping and get everything you need.
“Now, both of our children are in the military. Our son is in the Navy and our daughter Air Force. They’ll often call to talk or ask us for advice, so we get to relive it all again through them,” she added.
Johndro worked on the base from February 1987 to 1989, and then came back as an individual mobilization augmentee out of the Surgeon General’s Office, and stayed as an X-ray tech at the 42nd Strategic hospital. While she looks back on her time fondly, Johndro admits the hardest part of the job was when a KC-135 went down in October of 1989, and she had to X-ray the bodies from the crash.
“It was hard work,” Johndro said. “We had 12-hour shifts and often had to work weekends and holidays. We were on call every third weekend, and since my husband and I were stationed together, it was very hectic at our house. Someone was always working. Vacations were hard to coordinate, but they always made it work for us.”
Ossenfort spent 17 years working on the base before he retired, and in that time he was a crew chief, an aircraft worker, and later received a promotion to supervisor of a number of Loring organizations.
“Between the winters, it was the type of base where you were isolated from major towns,” Ossenfort said. “People got closer together up here, and we had snowmobile clubs, wives clubs, and all stayed together as a close-knit community.”
When the base closed in 1994, Ossenfort said it not only had an impact on the nearby communities of Caribou, Limestone, Presque Isle, but that places as far north as Madawaska were hurt by it.
“When you lose all the people who were here,” Ossenfort said. “You’re bound to have repercussions.”
Cowan worked on the base for four years in the 1950s as an air policeman for the Air Force.
“Air police are security people too,” said Cowan. “I generally did the security aspect around the bombers, and strictly worked on the ground. I secured airplanes and nuclear weapons.”
Cowan said that his time on the base in the ‘50s was “kind of boring,” and added that the security was effective in their duties.
“We were there to protect anyone from tampering with bombers or weapons,” said Cowan, “and it never happened. To my knowledge, the United States has never lost a nuclear weapon or plane as a result of enemy action.”
Presently, Cowan does volunteer work for the Loring Heritage Center, which involves greeting people, logging them, and answering any questions they may have about the once powerful military installation.
As president of the center, Ossenfort volunteers his time and works to preserve artifacts from the base’s operational years.
“We’re collecting quite a bit of material,” Ossenfort said. “Sometimes people will come in and see a picture of their husband or brother that they haven’t seen in years. There are a lot of good and sad feelings.”
Johndro also volunteers for the center, doing everything from “running websites,” and “tracking donated items in the computer,” to “cleaning toilets and putting up displays.”
“This weekend, we pulled a photo down and two of the guys visiting were actually in the picture,” Johndro said. “Neither of them remember it being taken, but they both recognized themselves right away. It’s very moving for someone to come in and find themselves staring back at a photo of a family member.”
“When people come in,” Ossenfort said, “their faces and expressions say it all.”
