RAPID CITY, S.D. — When Staff Sgt. Stan Lieberman returned from an overseas tour during World War II, he hoped the Army would send him to a base near his family in Massachusetts.
Instead, he received orders to report to Rapid City Air Base near Box Elder. It was another faraway place, as far as he was concerned.
"South Dakota? That must be very cold. Where the hell is it?" he remembers thinking at the time. "I studied geography and naming the capitals — I didn't even remember that Pierre was the capital."
Over the next 70 years, the young man and the Army's new base would grow up together. Lieberman, now 94, would marry, raise five children and become an active citizen in the area.
Rapid City Air Base would become Ellsworth Air Force Base, one of the area's biggest employers and a key part of the nation's defense.
From its early days as a training base for B-17 pilots in World War II through the Cold War and Operations New Dawn, Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, Ellsworth has played a key role in national defense.
The base was critical to the Cold War as one of four locations that housed B-1 planes, nuclear bombers that stood on constant alert ready to attack Soviet forces for several years in the late 1980s.
Last year, B-1 bombers deployed to Libya as part of a NATO-led airstrike airstrike against former Libyan ruler Col. Moammar Gadhafi.
When Lieberman's train pulled into Rapid City in 1943, the town's population was 14,000 with only three paved streets — Main Street, St. Joseph Street and West Boulevard.
Dinosaur Park was already standing; Lieberman remembers those green sculptures as one of the first things he saw in Rapid City. Lieberman and his buddies had to transfer to a narrow-gauge rail car in the Black Hills because the standard railroad couldn't navigate past Rapid Creek.
The base, which was 10 miles to the east near Box Elder, was a training center for B-17 pilots, who were shuffled in and out every few weeks for training before leaving to fight in World War II.
Lieberman left the Army Air Corps in September 1945. Since then, he has become part of Rapid City: He helped start several baseball leagues in town; worked for KOTA; trained hunting dogs; worked as chairman for South Dakota Game, Fish & Parks; and raised and played with children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
"I had some great experiences," he said. "I've had a good life."
Lieberman is one of 11,460 military veterans living in Pennington County as of September 2010, according to the U.S. Veterans Affairs office of the actuary.
In fiscal year 2010, the U.S. government spent more than $88 million on veteran expenses in Pennington County. Like Lieberman, many of those vets take active leadership roles in the community.
In 2010, the base employed 3,609 military members who brought 4,468 dependents to the area, according to Ellsworth's 2010 Economic Impact Analysis. That's more than 8,000 people and more than one-tenth of Rapid City's population. The base's 2010 payroll was $184 million for civilian and military personnel, and Ellsworth spent nearly $95 million on military construction, contracts, education and other services.
The report estimated the base created 1,579 jobs in 2010 with a payroll of just over $52.5 million.
"There's a piece of the social fabric of our community that is tied to the existence of the base," said Pat McElgunn, a retired Air Force colonel who chairs the Ellsworth Task Force. "These people bring a value to churches, social groups, clubs, arts, entertainment. They participate. These are 10,000 people that would not have been here if the base weren't here."
Federal government officials chose Rapid City over Sioux Falls and Watertown as an Army training base location in part because of the cooperation of Rapid City officials. Officials agreed to let the Army appropriate the municipal airport as part of the base and to build roads, improve highways, supply water and rent thousands of acres of land to the federal government for $1 per year.
Those promises paid off.
The base was built in 1942 at a cost of $8.7 million, which is about $115 million in 2010 dollars. At the time, Rapid City had a population of around 14,000 people. Army officials estimated an additional 4,000 workers would come to the Rapid City area to help build the base, which was expected to bring 4,000 soldiers to the area upon completion.
It took about seven months to build three runways, five hangars and 241 buildings that contained office space, a hospital and housing for 440 officers and 3,790 enlisted men. The first building contract was awarded March 7 and the last building became Army property Oct. 7, according to "Dakota Thunder," a forthcoming book on Ellsworth by local historian George Larson.
The base closed for about six months in September 1946 and reopened in March 1947 under the newly created U.S. Air Force. That fall, it was renamed Rapid City Air Field.
Brig. Gen. Richard Ellsworth, a wing commander at the base, died in a plane crash during a training mission in Newfoundland on March 18, 1953. Ellsworth's death prompted the base's final name change. President Dwight Eisenhower visited the base to dedicate it as Ellsworth Air Force Base on June 13 that year.
Ellsworth represents years of history that many other bases can't match, Larson said. He has toured other bases built during the World War II era that have since closed. One in Nebraska turned into a cattle feed area; some have turned into private airports and most wooden buildings are gone, he said. And part of the reason Ellsworth has survived is that locals want to keep it around.
"We don't have people standing outside the base saying remove the base with placards. It's the other way around. People want the base here," he said. "We should really be proud as a city of what we did for our country and our servicemen and women."
In the early days, Ellsworth soldiers would spend $1 each to pile in a taxi — or 50 cents to sit in a semi-truck operated by a local man whose son had died in the war — and spend their free time in Rapid City, Lieberman said.
Commissioned officers went to the officers' club in the Hotel Alex Johnson and noncommissioned officers like Lieberman would buy 40-cent beers across the street. They would also socialize at a Baken Park dance hall, which is where Lieberman met his wife, Delphie Cuny.
"I don't want to say you couldn't buy a drink for yourself or something like that, but they would get together and have parties for us guys," he said of Rapid City residents. "They entertained us. When you came into Rapid City, you were welcome."
Lieberman left the Army Air Corps when his term of service was up in September 1945. He and his wife tried to move to Massachusetts near his family, but lasted only a few weeks before they both missed South Dakota enough to come back to Rapid City.
He was not alone in retiring to Rapid City. A 2010 study by USAA and Military.com found Rapid City the third-best city in the country for military retirement with a population under 175,000. The study measured proximity to a military base, unemployment rate and factors such as crime rate and median home value to rank cities. Cheyenne, Wyo., ranked first and LaCrosse, Wis., ranked second on the list.
"(Rapid City) is conducive to families being raised there. It's a Midwestern town. It's a place where people bring American values to their lives every day," said Ward Carroll, who edits Military.com and used to stop at Ellsworth Air Force Base to refuel Navy jets. "What struck me as we were ambling up and down Main Street is it's clean. It's organized. It seems like you have access to everything you need to live comfortably."
The decision of Rapid City officials to invest in the base was "one of the better ones," said Ed McLaughlin, mayor of Rapid City from 1991 to 1997.
In the mid-'90s while McLaughlin was mayor, the base faced possible closure; McLaughlin and other officials worked to keep the base open.
"Some (investments) really pay dividends and some may not," he said. "That one, certainly, those individuals that were responsible for assisting should be very pleased with the results."
The base faced possible closure again in 2005. Local and state politicians banded together to convince the national Base Closure and Realignment Commission not to follow through on a federal recommendation to close Ellsworth. McElgunn believes Ellsworth is essential to national security.
"Other places you would be able to say with relative ease we could walk away from here and do a better job somewhere else," he said. "But I don't believe that in the case of Ellsworth."
Ellsworth employees have become part of the South Dakota community, from city council members to meteorologists, engineers and other roles.
"The base is an asset. It's an asset to South Dakota and it's an asset to our city and Rapid City and the surrounding cities," said Box Elder mayor Bill Griffiths, who retired from the Air Force. "We need Ellsworth."
Information from: Rapid City Journal, http://www.rapidcityjournal.com