Hanging next to the mantel in Capt. William McDonough's home in Kittery is the letter that was the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard's first stay of execution.

The letter, dated March 24, 1971 and addressed to New Hampshire Congressman Louis Wyman from President Richard Nixon, rescinded the Defense Department's order from 1964 that had put the Shipyard in a 10-year phase-out period. The yard had not made any physical improvements or upgrades since the order had been issued, and though there was a steady stream of subs coming into the yard in need of repairs and refueling, it was looking like the facility would close. But once the order was lifted, the Navy began pouring money back into the Shipyard, investing millions of dollars in 27 major construction projects during the next decade. The yard's workforce shot up by about 2,000 people, from roughly 5,500 to 7,500, during the 1970s, according to McDonough, and the workload increased as the Navy began work on its new 688-class of subs.

"It was wonderful," McDonough said of his time as commander of the Shipyard. McDonough, a retired captain in the U.S. Navy, was the top man at the yard from 1974 to 1979. "My entire career was blessed with an expanding submarine force," he said. Now, he's the spokesman for the Seacoast Shipyard Association, a lobbying group dedicated to keeping the shipyard open and vital.

The two decades of plenty that began under McDonough's watch and continued during the defense build-up of the Reagan administration in the 1980s came to an end in the mid-1990s when the Shipyard was a potential target during two rounds of base closures in 1993 and 1995. Ten years later, the shipyard is back in the crosshairs of the DOD's base re-alignment and closure (BRAC) committee. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is scheduled to release the latest BRAC list on Friday, May 13. The ominous, superstition-filled date is appropriate-this is the third time in the last 10 years that the Shipyard faces the all-too-real possibility of shutting its doors and sending its 4,800 workers packing.

That threat has prompted a string of rallies, letter writing campaigns and other efforts to drum up a groundswell of support for the yard. The latest was a "rolling rally" that traveled from by foot and by car from Rochester to Kittery on a rainy Saturday two weeks ago, with supporters clad in bright yellow "Save our Shipyard" T-shirts marching over the Piscataqua River by way of the Memorial Bridge and congregating at Gate 1 of the Shipyard.

As the release date of the BRAC list gets closer, Shipyard employees and advocates are girding their defenses and trying to maintain a positive, confident front. And while they tout the shipyard's rich history and ability to overhaul and refuel submarines at an incredible pace, some are making tentative plans for what life in the Seacoast might be like without the Shipyard.

fighting the private sector

For the last decade or so, the yard has faced the dual threats of closure at the hands of the government and the theft of its workload by privately owned shipyards.

"The (PNS) is the country's premier facility...for overhaul, refurbishment, modernization and refueling of nuclear submarines," according to McDonough. "It has more experience with all of those features than any other shipyard in the country."

The yard is the last of a dying breed, one of only four government-owned naval shipyards in the country. The other three navy yards, in Pearl Harbor, Puget Sound, and Norfolk, Va., could face closure under BRAC, but McDonough said each of the yards has an individual specialization that could keep them open. The Navy's Pacific Fleet is stationed in Pearl Harbor, and the Norfolk Naval Shipyard is one of the world's largest naval complexes; the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Wa., is the only facility licensed to recycle nuclear subs and dispose of nuclear waste.

The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard sets itself apart from other government and privately owned shipyards because of its efficiency, quick return rate on submarines that have come in for overhaul and ability to consistently come in under budget. The yard also boasts a strong safety record. In March, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration awarded the yard status as a "star site" in its Voluntary Protection Program for the yard's superior safety rating. The shipyard received another safety citation, the Secretary of the Navy Award, in 2003.

"In the situation we face now, all facts support shipyard's retention," he said.

The yard has completed more than 70 overhauls in the last seven years, McDonough said, often completing work on the ships ahead of schedule and under budget. There are currently five subs at the yard in various stages of being refueled and overhauled and last week, the Navy announced the USS Hartford would sail into the yard within the next year to undergo modernization procedures. The work on the Hartford had been previously assigned to the Electric Boat shipyard in Groton, Conn. McDonough said private sector shipyards often go over-budget and run long over schedule.

"Repair work is not their bag and they're not good at it," he said. That the work on the Hartford was sent to Portsmouth over Electric Boat is a "good omen" according to McDonough.

"It's always a good sign to get work assigned, as far as BRAC is concerned. It's one more recognition by Navy and Defense Department that they're beginning to recognize they can save millions of dollars and months of time if they send it here."

When the BRAC list is published, about 100 military bases across the country may be closed, McDonough said. The last round of BRACs in the mid-1990s closed 97 bases. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has cited an "excess in infrastructure" as the reason for the closures, although "no one has ever identified where that (excess) is," McDonough said.

"The threat is not the excess capacity, the threat is not that we're not performing well, the threat is not that we're not needed...the threat is the private sector," McDonough said. We know it's the desire of the administration to turn work over to the private sector. It's been their obsession and it's been our nemesis."

If closed, the shipyard's workload would be turned over to a shipyard like Electric Boat, owned by General Dynamics, or the Northrop Grumman Newport News shipyard in Virginia. McDonough said the Bush administration's belief that private sector shipyards are more efficient and less expensive is a "dead out wrong lie."

Under federal law, the Defense Department cannot contract out more than 50 percent of the work it needs done to the private sector. But McDonough believes the government should give more work to publicly owned shipyards, not less.

"What about Enron?" he said. "The private sector is not perfect."

This is by no means the first time the specter of privatization has haunted the shipyard, and though the shipyard today holds a stellar reputation, that hasn't always been the case. Russell Van Billiard worked at the shipyard from 1951 to 1986 and remembers that in the 1960s, the yard had a "miserable" performance record. During the latter part of the decade, the shipyard was under a 10-year phase-out order and was pegged for closure in 1974. That phase-out order was issued by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in 1964, who, like Rumsfeld, had the "privatization bug" according to Van Billiard. When Rear Admiral Thomas Westfall took command of the shipyard in the early 1970s, Van Billiard said applied simple, straightforward industrial management tactics to the shipyard and soon the yard was "percolating and into high gear."

"We went from the worst shipyard to the best," Van Billiard said. When President Nixon lifted the phase-out order in 1971, "that just rejuvenated the place."

"You knew you were doing the best work," Van Billiard said. "It's just so much more fun to work for a place that's on top of the pile."

The shipyard is the primary provider overhaul, repair, modernization, and refueling for the Navy's Los Angeles-class nuclear submarines. Shipyard employees work on everything from welding cracks and machining parts to traveling to other shipyards to share their expertise.

If the shipyard is on Secretary Rumsfeld's list, shipyard advocates can appeal to the nine-member BRAC committee. However, that appeal process isn't much more than a formality. "If you're on the secretary's list, that's it," McDonough said.

That doesn't mean the lights will go out and the gate of the shipyard will be locked on May 14 if the yard is on the BRAC list, though. Under federal regulations, closure proceedings must be initiated within two years of the list's publication and must be completed within six years.

The yard still has "plenty of work for a few more years," according to Paul O'Connor, president of the Metal Trades Union at the yard.

"Even though there is a lot of concern, we're doing things at our shipyard that aren't being done (anywhere else)," he said. "Being the best in the business isn't good enough for us. Even with the pressures of BRAC hanging over our heads, we are distancing ourselves from every other shipyard, public and private."

O'Connor began work at the yard in 1976 as an electrician, just as the working philosophy of the yard was changing to a more competitive, customer service-oriented mode to compete with private shipyards. The unique nature of his work, along with the relationships he's developed over the years, are what kept him at the yard.

"When I started, there were these old bucks that were there 20, 30 years, and I though, 'no way, not me. I'm not gonna be like that.' I couldn't conceive that. Thirty years later, here I am, and I don't regret it," he said.

the shipyard, by the numbers

Behind the gates, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard is a bustling industrial mini-metropolis. But among all the hardhats, heavy machinery and banners proclaiming "Portsmouth durability," there are the signs the shipyard is more than just an industrial machine. There's a childcare center, a barbershop, a tavern (only open on Wednesdays) and other staples of a working community. The shipyard, established in 1800, also has its own historical district that includes the home built for the shipyard's first commander, Isaac Hull, in 1815, a memorial park, and the sail from the submarine USS Squalus (later the USS Sail Fish), which sank off the Isles of Shoals in 1938 and whose crew was rescued in the only successful submarine rescue to date.

The 279 acres of the Seacoast the shipyard inhabits at the mouth of the Piscataqua River are a major economic engine for the region. According to data from the Seacoast Shipyard Association, 4,803 employees worked at the shipyard in 2004, generating $318,329,729 in payroll. Despite its name, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard is geographically located in Kittery. Maine is home to 2,771 shipyard employees while New Hampshire houses 1,878 shipyarders.

"I think (the shipyard) is absolutely critical to the economic well-being of this area," said Van Billiard. "And of course, economics creates other things, like good families, good schools, and health care."

The economic tendrils of the yard reach across New England. The employees that work in the yard reside in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, using their paychecks to drive the individual economies of their towns. The shipyard itself spent almost $49.5 million on goods and services last year, almost $30.1 million of which was spent in New England states.

The closure of the shipyard would produce "negative results in almost every economic measure," according to a report prepared in April by the state's Economic and Labor Market Information Bureau.

According to the report, the loss of wages and jobs would hit the state hard. New Hampshire would lose $14.8 million in state and local revenues the first year after the yard closes and the state's unemployment rate would rise by .5 percent. The housing and retail markets in the Seacoast region will also feel the sting of lost revenues if the yard closes, according to Peter Bartlett, an economist with the ELMIB who prepared the report.

"Any place where these shipyard workers spend their wages is going to have some impact, whether it's landlords that receive rent or real estate firms that buy and sell or market houses," he said. "Some loss in real estate values is possible, but certainly retail trade is a big one. That's where people spend a lot of their wages."

Though the Seacoast was rocked by the closure of Pease Air Force Base in Newington and Portsmouth in 1991 under a previous BRAC order. Bartlett said it's hard to compare that event to the potential shuttering of the shipyard.

"That was a very different sort of event because...it had thousands of military personnel stationed there, but the number of civilians was in the hundreds," Bartlett said. "When you've got four or five thousand civilians out of work, they're less likely to move away, so the result is you have a significant number of people unemployed before things sort of settle out."

Another major difference between the closure of Pease and the shipyard's present situation is that Pease locked its doors in the middle of a recession. Bartlett said the Seacoast has had a strong regional economy during the last few years, a fact that could mitigate some of the economic setbacks.

How long would it take for things to settle out? While the report doesn't speculate about a timeframe for recover, Dr.Ross Gittell a professor of management at the University of New Hampshire, said the negative impact and recovery would occur "over an extended period of time, probably over the course of a decade or two."

filling the void

Imagining the Seacoast without the Shipyard is difficult. It's an almost inseparable part of the fabric of the Seacoast, from the staggering economic hold it has on the region and the stable of accolades its racked up in the last seven years to its two centuries worth of history and the countless generations of workers that have passed through the gates in Kittery. Shipyard boosters and officials from Maine and New Hampshire will gladly talk about all these positives, but there's one thing they're reluctant to discuss: what can take the place of the shipyard if it closes.

"We're fighting the fight, but if we are on the list, we have to deal with that. But we have to keep those plans under our belts until the list comes out," O'Connor said.

Behind the scenes, though, there is some planning going on. Earlier this year, the town of Kittery received a $175,000 federal grant to kick-start the process for planning for a base closure. The town is working with the Southern Maine Regional Planning Commission and Sassaki Associates, a consulting firm out of Watertown, Mass., as part of a "pre-planning process," according to Kittery Town Manager Jonathan Carter.

"We're trying to keep a low profile because the most important effort is to try and keep base open," he said.

The town is looking at reuse possibilities and examining how other towns have dealt with base closures, but stressed that everything is "very preliminary." The town must have the grant money spent and a report ready by May 16.

"The whole idea is to stay ahead of the process and not get trapped in it, and that's what we're trying to do," he said.

And because of the tenuousness and uncertainty of the situation, even private developers aren't speculating about what could replace the shipyard, Thibeault said.

"People aren't even in early planning stages yet," he said.

That doesn't seem to be entirely true, though. At least one person has designs on the country's closed military bases-President George W. Bush.

At a conference for the Small Business Administration last week in Washington, D.C., Bush unveiled a plan that would convert former military bases into oil refineries as a way to expand the country's energy production. The plan, unveiled weeks before the BRAC list is scheduled to hit, begs the question: will Seacoast denizens be staring at grimy oil refinery as they cross the Memorial Bridge?

"It's possible, but it's not desirable," according to Russ Thibeault, president of Applied Economic Research in Laconia. "I'm not sure it could physically fit on the site, because (oil refineries) are massive. But it's possible."

Gittell agreed, saying that environmental concerns would restrict or limit plans for a refinery.

The oil industry has had its eye on the Seacoast before. In 1973, oil magnate Aristotle Onassis was angling to build a massive oil refinery that would have stretched four square miles over Durham Point. Massive public outcry and the work of citizen activists halted the plan.

But if not an oil refinery, then what? It could take many years to clean up the shipyard, Thibeault said, but once the government delivers a clean site, the shipyard offers a good opportunity for mixed-use development-retail space, some residential homes, and an area for the research-development industry.

"I believe there are developers, probably in New England and certainly nationally, that would find that site very attractive. It's right along the interstate...within the Portsmouth region, which is very well regarded, and its waterfront property," he said.

Before any development takes place, however, the shipyard will require an extensive environmental clean up. Doug Bogan, program director for the New Hampshire office of Clean Water Action, said that local environmental groups have been tentatively discussing how to aid in clean-up efforts if the shipyard closes. Two centuries worth of industrial activity have turned the area into a "superfund site" Bogan said. Pollutants include metals like lead that have seeped into the soil, combustion byproducts and other toxic contaminants.

"Some of it's not really possible (to remove), so even using the word clean up is a misnomer," Bogan said, adding that it's easier to think of any clean up efforts as simply "isolating the waste."

No matter how the site is redeveloped, the jobs and wages lost from the shipyard's closure will never be recovered, Thibeault said.

"My feeling is if you lose the shipyard, you flat out don't recover in economic terms, ever. You don't fully replace what's there in terms of blue collar jobs," he said.

the past and the future

Russ Van Billiard came to the shipyard in 1951, at first working as a submarine design engineer. By the time he came back from a three-year stint in the Navy in the mid-1950s, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard had moved from overhauling the Navy's fleet of World War II-era submarines to designing and building nuclear submarines.

"The advance in technology over 10 years was incredible, just incredible," he said.

The engineers at the shipyard were involved in almost the entire submarine building process, Van Billiard said. Once subs were completed, engineers would go out on sea trials with the vessels to see how things worked.

"You'd start with a blank sheet of paper, you'd design something, and then walk down to the foundry and see them pour the casting," he said.

The first time Van Billiard went to sea with a submarine, he remembers he was tremendously seasick.

"I was pretty much lying in a bunk the whole time until we got back the next day," he said. "It was the only time I got seasick."

As the shipyard made the transition from building to repairing and overhauling submarines, Van Billiard said one of the most interesting aspects of the job was the shipyard's "tiger team." The shipyard was, essentially, like AAA for submarines. When a sub couldn't make it into a navy yard for a crucial repair, a team of anywhere from one person to 25 people would be sent out to fix the problem.

"They were really interesting jobs because we'd have to scope out the nature of the work carefully" because you would need exactly the right tools with you, he said. "We were really good at it, too. We did 50 or 60 a year."

The shipyard constructed its last submarine, the SSN Sand Lance, in 1971. Van Billiard moved from designing the torpedo systems on submarines to working on the yard's Fleet Support Type Desk after his stint in the Navy. While on the Type Desk, Van Billiard and his staff were responsible for an array of duties that included dealing with suppliers and involving the shipyard with the Seacoast community.

That kind of community involvement took many forms. Van Billiard recalls that the McDonald's in Newington offered a free meal each month to sailors stationed in the shipyard and their families. Another time, the Portsmouth High School marching band was on hand to welcome a submarine into the yard. The missile tubes of the sub were filled with blue and gold balloons that were released as the band played.

"That stuff is really meaningful to a crew," Van Billiard said.

Van Billiard's son, Jay, was also an employee at the shipyard. He was laid off during the 1990s, when the shipyard cut its workforce from almost 9,000 to just under 4,000.

"Living his experience of finding another job was very hard," Van Billiard said. His son was a machinist and a nuclear inspector, a set of highly specialized skills that Van Billiard said his son had trouble finding a job to match.

"People from the shipyard have exceptional skills, they're really skilled people. Ideally they'd like to find a job that matches their skills, but (those jobs) are not out there, or the number is extremely limited," he said.

While some employees may be making preparations for the yard's possible closure, others, like O'Connor, are staying on message and hoping for the best.

"I'm not really changing the way I'm doing anything in that regard. I'm focused on doing what I can to spread a positive message, why it's not logical to close the shipyard," he said.

And if, in another two weeks, the yard is on the list?

"We'll take that fight anywhere we can take it, to anywhere we need to take it. We'll be as aggressive as we need to be," O'Connor said. "And it won't be pretty."