Monday Musings #32 From the 1995 Decision to Close Kelly AFB to Port San Antonio in 2025

I had the honor Friday of serving as emcee at the Dee Howard Foundation’s 2025 San Antonio Aviation and Aerospace Hall of Fame luncheon at Port San Antonio’s Boeing Center at Tech Port. The annual gathering celebrates the city’s historic role in the development of military aviation, space flight, and San Antonio's present and future as a leading innovator in aerospace, defense, cybersecurity, advanced manufacturing, and STEM education. 

This year there was a special reason to convene and celebrate the year’s inductees into the Hall of Fame for their service. Thirty years ago the federal Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) announced its decision to close Kelly Air Force Base, one of the Air Force's four major logistics depots and the oldest active military aviation installation in the country.

The end of the Cold War during the Reagan Administration, including the 1989 collapse of the Berlin Wall and the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, led the president, the Pentagon and Congress to conclude that closure of bases and other military facilities would deliver a “peace dividend,” allowing billions of dollars in annual defense spending to be cut or reallocated. Military City USA, as San Antonio modeled itself, was on high alert starting with the first round of closures announced in 1988. Labor issues at Kelly, cited by the Air Force Base, put the huge installation that was home to World War I pilot training, World War II aviation maintenance, and logistical supply flights around the globe, at high risk.

Kelly, more than any of the city’s other military installations or public or private sector employees, helped create the city’s Mexican-American middle-class, with tens of thousands of civilian workers earning federal wages and benefits that lifted inner city families out of poverty and created workforce training and educational opportunities for generations.

Kelly escaped closure rounds in 1988, 1991, and narrowly, in 1993, but 1995 brought news when it hit of the inevitable. Still, the news shocked city leaders and San Antonio residents who had turned out by the thousands for rallies to stave off the base’s demise. The local economy was overly dependent on military spending and the convention and tourism industry, the latter mostly providing low-wage jobs for hospitality workers. Suddenly, thousands of good jobs, each one supporting a family, were going to be lost and a massive air force base would be vacated. 

I asked the audience of 410 at the outset for a show of hands: How many of you lived and worked in San Antonio in 1995 when the city was plunged into crisis with the announcement? I had no time to count, but far fewer hands went up than I expected. I had assumed half the room would remember the announcement and ensuing days of headlines and hand-wringing. Instead, perhaps 10% said they were in San Antonio then. Of course, as I looked out at the students and young professionals in attendance, I realized many in the audience had not yet been born or were too young to remember.

That’s one reason why the Dee Howard Foundation and Port San Antonio’s work to keep our city’s military aviation history alive is so important. What city civic and business leaders did back then laid the foundation for all the good that has since come.

The BRAC process over five rounds that included a 2005 round after a 30-year commission hiatus, led to the closure of 350 military installations, many of them in cities where nothing substantive ever developed to replace the economic loss. Yet San Antonio has thrived, perhaps more so than any other city that experienced the loss of a major military facility.

Port San Antonio today is home to 19,000 workers earning an average $111,000 annually. The port’s 80 tenant companies generate $9 billion annually in economic activity, and these numbers will be obsolete by 2026 given the campus’ rapid growth. Many of those workers are certified aviation and mechanical specialists, or cyber defense techs who did not have to earn a four-year university degree to find meaningful careers at world-class companies like Boeing, Standard Aerospace, Knight Aerospace and Lockheed Martin. 

Friday’s Hall of Fame Luncheon was all about remembering the important events and leaders of 30 years ago while also celebrating the Port’s current success and ambitious future plans for expansion and continuing growth.

Dr. William “Bill” Thornton, a high-profile San Antonio oral surgeon and medical community leader, was elected mayor in 1995, and soon after was hit with the announcement of the Kelly closure, a development that would in large part define his term in office. In 1996, Thornton appointed attorneys José Villarreal and Tullos Wells and City Councilman Juan Solis III to chair an initiative charged with developing a plan to transition the base from closure to a public-private partnership building on Kelly’s legacy and preserving and even expanding its military workload.

Villarreal had a close personal connection to then-President Bill Clinton, while U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison joined in to lobby administration and Pentagon officials to delay Kelly’s closure, thus giving San Antonio time to absorb the job losses and take steps to diversify its economy. The strategy proved providential, ultimately leading to a White House meeting with Clinton that eventually bought the city six long years before Kelly AFB finally closed for good in 2001.

Together, the three men received the Dee Howard Foundation’s Aerospace Industry Impact Award, while the Aerospace Legacy Award was given to Joe Krier, the longtime president and CEO of the San Antonio Greater Chamber of Commerce, who led the private sector's efforts in establishing the Greater Kelly Development Corporation, which eventually became Port San Antonio.

Thornton received a special recognition award from Port San Antonio President and CEO Jim Perschbach for the decisive role he played in the city’s post-closure response. While addressing the audience with some of his recollections Friday, Thornton also read aloud a letter sent for the occasion by former President Clinton praising the city’s response to the closure of Kelly. 

Dee Howard’s former business partner and the foundation’s co-founder, Wayne Fagan, received the 2025 Chairman's Award for his “enduring dedication to the aerospace industry and education in San Antonio and beyond. As a longtime business partner to aviation pioneer Dee Howard, Fagan co-founded The Dee Howard Foundation in 2013, transforming it from a donor-advised fund into a dynamic nonprofit that champions Pre-K through 12 aeronautical STEM education. Under his leadership, the foundation launched initiatives like the San Antonio Aviation and Aerospace Hall of Fame.”

The 2025 Aerospace Hope for the Future Award was given to Kathryn ‘Kat’ Bolish for her outstanding contributions to space exploration and STEM education in San Antonio. As a program manager at Astroport Space Technologies, "she leads the NASA-funded "Brickbot" project, developing technologies to transform lunar regolith into bricks for constructing landing pads on the Moon. Concurrently, she manages the WEX Foundation's Lunar Caves Analog Test Sites (LCATS) program, guiding middle and high school students through hands-on experiments that simulate lunar missions, including building LiDAR instruments and designing robots adapted to the Moon's gravity.”

Hearing Bolish speak passionately about her dedication to introducing young students to space exploration and hands-on projects and programs designed to prepare them for future aerospace and space exploration careers is the kind of inspirational experience that will make you feel good about the future of our country.

Bolish joined Wells and Dee Howard Foundation Executive Director Christopher Mammen for the Sept. 5 episode of my bigcitysmalltown podcast. It’s well worth your time.