newsminer.com

FAIRBANKS — An Air Force station formed in 1943 to assist Russia’s fight against Germany brought jobs and people to the city of Galena, population 650, on the middle Yukon River.

The station — notably, the closest U.S. fighter jet base to Russia through the Cold War — changed with the times, becoming a Forward Operating Location as a first line of defense in those tense times.

And as threats have changed, so has the need. Air Force officials, state government representatives and more than 100 high school students marked Tuesday as the end of one era, but the beginning of a new one, turning over a ceremonial station key as the military stepped out.

Col. Brent Johnson is with the 611th Air Support group at Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage, and is the installation commander at Galena.

He spoke to students gathered in an auditorium, the same students who are expected to benefit from the expansion of their school program into the former military facilities at Galena.

“Galena has represented a place where we have fought tyranny from,” he told the students. That defense was first launched against the Germans during World War II, when the United States sent aircraft support to ally Russia through a lend/lease program, and continued into the Cold War years.

“Through the Cold War, it served as a place we stood guard over America from,” Johnson said. “Today, I don’t think much has changed. Education serves as a great way to fight tyranny.”

The Galena Interior Distance Learning Academy, a boarding school now in its 12th year at the station, is a major beneficiary of the former Air Force buildings, which sit on land owned by the state and formerly leased to the military. The Galena station was among installations ordered closed in 2005 based on recommendations by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission. At the time, the Pentagon estimated savings of $49 billion in 20 years by closing inefficient bases and streamlining services across the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.

GILA serves 115 students from more than 40 Alaska villages, many of which had to close schools due to low enrollment. GILA has long hoped to expand, and the new Air Force facilities can house 350 students, White said.

Attendees study toward high school diplomas while taking coursework in career tracks such as aviation, automotives, cosmetology and construction.

While grateful for the facilities, principal Harry White is concerned about how to pay for new bills that, until now, the Air Force has footed.

The boarding school will have to pay for utilities, a total that could be in excess of $1 million a year, he said.

On the other hand, the academy can now remodel buildings into classrooms, which may help make gains towards expansion plans.

Any buildings the school didn’t want and the state couldn’t use were torn down in order for the Air Force to comply with its original, 1940s land lease agreement with the state.

White estimated that the Air Force donated $200 million worth of buildings to the academy, a real boon for a remote boarding school.

He is planning to solidify support for a push for full state funding of the school. The state covers about half the $30,000 cost per student, per year, with federal grants funding the remainder. Those grant sources, though, are about exhausted, White said.

His position is that the state should fully fund the Interior boarding school, much as it pays for the Mount Edgecumbe facility in Southeast. The state’s third boarding school, in Nenana, also is only partially state-funded.

“The children are just like any children in the state,” White said. “If this is a boarding school that is needed because of so many small schools closing, the state should be paying the expenses.”

Built in the 1940s, the Galena Air Station was originally a refueling stop for lend-lease planes en route to Russia. Following World War II, the facility shouldered a national security task as a fighter base housing planes designed to intercept Russian bombers attempting to invade America’s air space.

The end of the Cold War lessened threats from abroad and, in turn, the need for far-flung outposts like Galena. At the same time, technological advances increased response time for interceptors stationed at larger, more viable bases, such as Eielson near Fairbanks and Elmendorf near Anchorage.

The last deployment from Galena occurred in 2004, when fighter jets took off to intercept Russian aircraft off Alaska’s coast, Johnson said.

The Air Force demolished about 15 percent of the military’s buildings that the state and school couldn’t use, Johnson said. They removed a host of extra features equipping the long runway for fighter jets. The landing strip, which was jointly used by the military, the state and the small city, will revert into state hands.

The base closure has been a “slow and methodical” process, Johnson said.

“Initially, I think some of the people in the Galena community might have had some uneasy feelings toward what would happen, but that disappeared quickly when we started taking about what we could do to transition these facilities to the school,” he said. “It (the process) has become a model, a template for the rest of the Air Force, for how to do a BRAC closure.”