The Great Strategic Air Command Base Lake Fiasco

I’ve always loved maps, so when John LaForge rolled out a huge one of the Strategic Air Command’s base near Omaha, Nebraska, several Catholic Workers and other pacifist friends gathered around to plan where we might block an entry gate as part of our Feast of the Holy Innocents protest against nuclear weapons. A huge snowstorm had us wondering whether we could even reach the entrance to block it.

The map showed a small lake just outside the base fence, and in that lake was a small island about 150 yards from the shore. The lake and island were part of a recreation facility for military families. There was a small pier with a couple of canopy pontoon boats, canoes, and a couple of small boats with outboard motors which could be rented for picnics or fishing, etc.

The activist brainstorming session that December soon led to an inspired scenario to return in the summer and swim out to the island and occupy it as long as we could and put up banners declaring the island a “Nuclear Free Zone.” We could float our supplies in an inflatable raft and push it out to the island with us.

I proposed that when the base MPs got into boats to come arrest us that we could simply jump in the lake and refuse to come out. “We could bring snorkels and swim fins to help evade capture,” I suggested. I kept imagining frustrated Air Force MPs chasing us in boats while we dived under the water to avoid capture, and I was enchanted with the idea of an occupation. If we could last out there for a day or two, we might even get national media attention. And since the lake wasn’t within the confines of the base fence, others could arrive along the lake and swim out and join us. Ah, the idealistic enthusiasm of youth! I was 28 and only seven years after being discharged from the Navy as a Conscientious Objector.

So, we schemed and planned all winter and into the spring of 1984. The island occupation captured my imagination. I laughed my way through one conversation after another, encouraging my activist buddies to take part. I’d been to many anti-nuke, anti-war protests, and there was a profound seriousness to most of them. I get that. After nuclear annihilation, there’s nobody left to appreciate things like irony. But the island scenario had a comic aspect that captured my sense of the absurd. As an ex-military guy, I knew the MPs would probably feel pretty ridiculous obeying orders to chase down and arrest slippery wet civilians at a recreation site. Because after all the absurdity subsides, I thought both sides would agree that peace activists enjoy recreation as much as military personnel and their families.

So, following the resistance retreat at SAC that August of ’84, there were seven of us who stayed in the area to bring our dream to fruition. Beside myself, there was Jeff Stack, Bob James, and Jerry Mehalovich; all from Columbia, Missouri, and Rebecca Rosenbaum, Bernie Prokop, and Mike Sprong. That might have been where I first met Beth Preheim, who agreed to abet our misdemeanors and drop us off in a big van adjacent to the lake entrance.

During our discussions of the scenario, most felt that if we followed my original idea to evade capture by jumping in the lake that we’d incur more serious legal charges. I argued and pled otherwise but to no avail. It was six against one, and we worked with consensus, so I finally acquiesced to remain on the island once we occupied it. I was bummed, but wasn’t gonna miss out on what I felt would be a historic moment of resistance. 

We made a banner that said, “Nuclear Free Zone,” and somebody scouted the base lake and discovered the island had a small chicken wire fence facing the shoreline where we could hang the banner. The lake opened for business at 9am, so we decided to show up at 8 o’clock. We loaded the van with an inflatable raft to transport our water, food, sunscreen, etc. We even had a watermelon and some bran muffins to snack on. I brought swim fins.

I remember when Beth pulled up to the entrance road to the lake seeing a guy walking along the shoreline with a stick with a nail in it. He was spearing trash with it and putting it into a sack. He was right between us and the lake. We quickly unloaded our gear and began running toward the water. We agreed not to speak to him, but I remember his puzzled face as he looked up to see 7 hairy individuals running towards him with our raft and supplies, and he said, “Hey, the lake doesn’t open until 9am. You can’t go swimming here.” I remember all the giggling and laughing as we ran right past him and into the water. Clearly, we were not his usual clientele.

After a vigorous swim, we crawled up onto the island, dragged our supplies ashore and looked at the guy on the beach waving the stick and yelling something about the lake. We hung our banner on the chicken wire fence and celebrated. We were exhilarated.

The guy with the stick eventually walked over to a shed near the pier with the rental boats. I thought it might take a couple hours for the base security to show up. It only took about 30 minutes. We could see a couple vans show up and disgorge a dozen or so MPs. Soon there were discussions taking place over there. We saw someone peering at us through binoculars, so we waved to show them how friendly we were. I suppose, like most people who live on islands, we had developed a false sense of security due to our isolation from those who would see us as culturally unsophisticated and as people who needed authority figures to come order them around. As we watched them load a dozen MPs onto a pontoon boat with a canopy on it, that sense of security was soon replaced with one of foreboding. They began heading our way along with two smaller boats powered by outboard motors. Those boats had an airman to steer the motor. One had a guy with a video camera, and the other had an officer who commanded the whole flotilla.

As they came chugging across the water, I remarked, “This reminds me of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria. Now I know how the native people in the Caribbean felt when the Spanish arrived.”

As they arrived, we heard the officer tell the MPs on the pontoon boat not to go ashore until the guy with the video camera boat circled the entire island for video evidence. After his circumnavigation, the officer ordered the MPs ashore from the pontoon boat while the video boat recorded them doing so. We all sat down to wait, and then the video guy came ashore from his little boat to record our supplies and our banner. I remember Jeff Stack welcoming them and offering some of our food. They declined. They removed our banner and while two MPs held it up it was videotaped. Then our faces were recorded too and afterward the video tech got back in his boat to record us being put on the pontoon boat.

Bob James had earlier remarked how low in the water the pontoon boat was when all those MPs were aboard. He said they’re probably going to have to make two trips to be safe. When the officer told the MPs to put us onto the pontoon boat, Bob spoke up and repeated his earlier observation to the airmen. He added, “The pontoon boats might sink if we all get on it at the same time.” He offered to wait and go on the next trip, but was abruptly interrupted and told to get on the boat with everybody else. “OK, but I hope everyone can swim,” he replied.

I went aboard near the front and leaned against the rail next to Mike Sprong. It’s a good thing nobody was handcuffed or zip tied.

It was crowded on the boat, and when the boat rental guy started up the motor and began heading for the beach, he went very cautiously and slow. The airman sergeant said, “This is too slow; it’s going to take forever at this rate so speed it up some.”

That was his first mistake. As the boat sped up, water immediately started coming over the bow and washed over the shoes of the MPs in the front of the boat. They told the sergeant that water was coming aboard, so he made an executive decision and ordered everyone toward the back of the boat.

When all that weight shifted to the back, the boat tilted up in front and the back of the boat went underwater. The motor went under as well and sputtered to a stop. So, the sergeant ordered everyone to the front of the boat, and the bow took on water once again.

I looked over at Mike, and we were both howling with laughter. Anxious MPs were standing with water up to their ankles.

Suddenly, the boat rental guy hollered that the boat was sinking and immediately jumped overboard into the lake. When he surfaced, his glasses were gone and he said, “Oh no! My glasses!” Then he dove under the surface to see if he could retrieve them. He came back up with no luck.

All the activists were hysterical with laughter. I heard Mike say, to the MPs “You know we swam out here and we’re already wet, so we can all jump off so you guys don’t sink.” But we were sternly ordered to stay aboard while MPs spread out over the deck and the boat finally stopped tilting and righted itself.

Mike and I couldn’t stop laughing. We laughed so hard tears were running down our faces. The MPs weren’t laughing, though, and I realized how embarrassed they were, some with water up below their knees.

So, I tried to stop. But then they tried to restart the pontoon’s motor. Every time they tried to start it, it would sputter and die. And every time it did, we’d bust out laughing again.

At one point, I looked out to the boat with the video tech and realized he was getting the whole fiasco on tape. The officer in command was red-faced too, but recovered enough to direct his own boat pilot to pull up to the front of the pontoon and tied a tow line to the pontoon. His motor stopped while tying on the line. And when they tried to restart his motor, it stalled out after about ten tries.

While all this was going on, the wind on the lake was blowing us closer and closer to shore, so when we finally drifted about 10 yards from shore, Mike and I jumped into the knee-high water and pulled the pontoon boat to shore.

You’d think they might be grateful, but they weren’t. They ordered us over where their police vans were waiting and told us to face the van and spread our arms over our heads while they searched us. I turned my head over my shoulder and said, “You know, if y’all had joined the Navy instead of the Air Force, this never would have happened.”

INTERROGATION IN THE BLUE ROOM

They zip tied us and drove us to the military police building, where we were processed for trespass on a military base. I was first to be processed, but I hadn’t brought my ID, so I told them who I was. They asked for my social security number, and I refused, telling them they already had it from previous arrests there at SAC protests. They said I would then be detained until the FBI could verify I was who I said I was. They told me to go wait in a room down the hall. So, I sat there mulling over my options. As I looked around the room, I noticed that everything in the room was blue. There were a couple desks, file cabinets, chairs, and the usual things you might find in an office. They were covered in blue latex paint.  There were ceiling fans, and I noticed that the window bracing had all been painted in the same blue latex paint.

I wondered to myself, “Who paints a desk? Or a chair or a file cabinet? The fan blades are painted blue too.” Even the walls and wainscotting were painted.

Bernie was next, and he hadn’t given his social security number either, so he joined me in the blue room. I asked Bernie if he noticed anything unusual about the room.

“Not really,” he said.

But when I told him that everything was painted the same color blue, he agreed that it was kinda weird.

“It’s almost as if it’s some kind of sensory deprivation tactic to deprive us a normal environment,” I said.

I didn’t really think it was done for that purpose, but it was fun to pretend it was. The most likely explanation was that some officer decided to give a soldier something to keep him busy and out of his hair, so he told him to paint the room blue, but didn’t specify exactly what he wanted painted. So, the  passive-aggressive soldier decided to paint everything in blue latex. But I was bored, so I decided to go with the premise that it was a secret government plot to break us down psychologically with sensory deprivation tactics.

I was, however, concerned that I might have to stay in custody for a couple more days. I had a wedding to go to in a few days and knew my wife would be upset if I didn’t attend. So, I told Bernie I’d changed my mind about giving my social security number. The other co-defendants were not going to be held over, so I told Bernie I was going to tell the MPs that they psychologically broke me by putting me in a room where everything was blue. So, I opened the door and hollered down the hall that they won; that they had broken me by putting me in this awful blue room, and I was ready to confess my participation in the island occupation and was ready to name names and divulge my social security number.

I yelled, “Just get me out of this blue room! I can’t take it anymore!”

I encouraged Bernie to divulge his Social Security number too, and after the others were processed, they took our info, gave us a ban and bar letter, and let us go.

So, everyone went home and waited for a court date since we’d already been arrested there previously. But it never came. After about a year, someone finally checked and were told that our trespass charges had been dropped. I was truly disappointed because I hoped to see the video evidence in court. Around the 10^th anniversary of the action, a freedom of information request was filed for the video, but we were told the evidence was no longer available and had probably been erased and/or recorded over.

I often wonder what those Air Force guys thought about our experience at the lake. I wonder if we changed any hearts or minds. I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when they went home that night and their spouses asked them how their day was or why their shoes and pant legs were all wet?