Offutt Air Force Base officially shuttered its stables on New Year's Day, ending a 120-year tradition of horses living alongside enlisted men on the Bellevue base once named Fort Crook.
The equine era didn't end so well.
The stables' longtime manager, a retired master sergeant, accuses Air Force brass of purposely letting buildings decay so that the area could be condemned, bulldozed and turned into a campground — a charge that Air Force officials deny.
The stable's patrons blame base leaders for the demise of an elderly horse, George, who died two days after being moved from the barn that had been his home for 26 years.
The Air Force leaders who oversee base recreation say they tried nearly everything to keep the stables open, even offering to let the horses' owners run the stables as a private company.
In the end, the officials said, closing the stables was the only option besides pouring millions of dollars into a massive renovation effort.
“Closing wasn't something we wanted to do. It's something we had to do,” said Col. Michael Allshouse, commander of the 55th Wing's support group.
David Daisy, volunteer manager of the stables until last year, begs to differ.
“They have done this in an underhanded fashion,” he said. “This stable could have gone on, continued a tradition, for years and years, but they were bent on getting rid of it.”
The base's connection to horses started in 1890, when Fort Crook was commissioned and built along the Missouri River. The then-Army post housed calvary soldiers and their horses as they battled American Indians and then left to fight in the Spanish-American War.
The current stables opened in 1960, after Fort Crook became Offutt Field, and then Offutt Field became Offutt Air Force Base. An airman and a former cowboy named William Dietzel led a yearlong effort to build a riding academy alongside a new lake recreation area.
In the years that followed, the base held rodeos, gave riding lessons and even sponsored a polo team that played matches across the United States. Longtime stable patron Chris Childress, a retired Air Force technical sergeant, said the barn was at capacity through most of the 1990s, with horses occupying all of the 32 stalls available.
As the decades passed, though, the stable buildings gradually fell into disrepair, despite countless hours of work by Daisy, who spent nights and weekends volunteering at the stables even after he retired from the Air Force in 2004.
The stables' patrons blame the Air Force for the buildings' gradual decline, suggesting that virtually no work or money was put into them — and that the failure to repair faulty wiring could have electrocuted a horse. Daisy said the wiring was eventually repaired after he complained to Rep. Lee Terry.
The Air Force spent $90,000 in appropriated military funds to solve the safety problems, Allshouse said. Military regulations, however, don't allow any spending for upkeep of “Category C” recreational areas like the stables, he said.
Instead, any profits that the stables make are put back into their upkeep, he said.
The problem is that the stables stopped making money, meaning there was no revenue to replace buildings that grew more decrepit by the year, said Thomas Fahrer, deputy chief of the 55th Force Support Squadron, which ran the stables.
“It's never easy when you come to a point like this,” Fahrer said. “But we had to make a business decision.”
Childress, who had stabled horses at Offutt since 1993, said he never sensed that the Air Force had any interest in continuing the tradition of horses on base.
Air Force leaders presented alternative plans, such as doubling the stabling fees and turning the stables into a private enterprise, that were wildly unrealistic, he said. And officials refused to try any of the horse owners' moneymaking plans, such as reviving a rodeo.
Both Daisy and Childress say the Air Force leadership treated the horse owners — and their horses — shabbily in the months preceding the stables' closing.
The horse owners put up a new riding arena fence, working on it nearly every weekend over the summer, only to learn that their volunteer work would be demolished, they said.
And Childress said he repeatedly told Air Force leaders that George, a 30-year-old horse owned by a retired teacher, would die if he was moved from his longtime home.
George, who had been trained to smile on command, died two days after being moved, said Childress, who thinks the horse would have lived several more years had he been allowed to stay put.
Now Daisy is spearheading an effort to put up a memorial for George, one that will sit next to the Air Force base that no longer stables horses.
“George gave his life for progress,” Daisy said.
Contact the writer: 444-1064, matthew.hansen@owh.com
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