Stories from the silo: Airman, 82, recounts experience on Nov. 22, 1963, at the Titan 1-A missile facility in Lincoln

Editor's note: First in a series. On a chilly Friday morning, less than a week before Thanksgiving, a 21-year-old airman named Ken Barthelette headed for his briefing at Beale Air Force Base, just like any other start of shift. Dressed in his usual crisp white coveralls. red cravat and powder blue hard hat emblazoned with the insignia of the Strategic Air Command, Barthelette finished the briefing, secured the leather notebook containing the top-secret launch codes and boarded the military bus with the rest of the crew for the familiar 40-minute ride to the Titan 1-A missile facility off Highway 193, about 1½ miles east of Lincoln's city limits. As always, an armed Air Force policeman was on board to guard the secret documents. When they arrived, Barthelette climbed down into the underground compound that would be his home for the next 24 hours, took up his position in front of a two-story power station and, just like always, began the routine checks to make sure everything was working properly. He'd been there less than an hour when the alarm sounded. "I thought to myself, 'Here we go again,' " he remembers. Drills were common. Sometimes, there would be several in one shift. "Practice, practice, practice," he explains, "because everything has to be just perfect to launch the missiles." His job: Make sure there was enough electricity so the silo doors would open and the hydraulics would carry the missiles smoothly to the surface, "then be ready to push the button that I needed to push so that they in the launch center could push the buttons that they would need to push." Elsewhere in the underground compound, other crew members were at work at separate stations. They couldn't see each other; instead, they communicated via headsets. It was all part of a "Fail Safe" design, meaning no single person had direct control over a launch. Instead, there were several layers of security and multiple people who had to perform simultaneous steps to verify the launch sequence. After awhile, Barthelette sensed something was not right. "I finally got the word that this could not be a practice launch. My knees started shaking and I said, 'Uh-oh.' " Uh-oh, indeed. It was Nov. 22, 1963. At approximately 10:30 a.m. local time, President John F. Kennedy had been fatally shot while riding in a motorcade in Dallas. "Back then, we didn't have the communication that we have nowadays," Barthelettte says in a telephone interview from his home in southwestern Missouri. "Everything was jumbled. ... We got word that the president had been assassinated and that the governor had been assassinated and Secretary of State Robert McNamara had been assassinated. And then we got word that there was a radar site, I think it was in Wyoming, that had been sabotaged and blown up." They had to assume missiles would be following soon. For four hours, when he wasn't working the dials and switches to maintain the power supply, the 21-year-old E-4, a rank equivalent to sergeant, stood at parade rest within arm's reach of the button that would help launch the facility's three nuclear missiles, each capable of traveling 6,000 miles and creating a blast so powerful it would destroy buildings within a nine-mile radius of where it struck. Would Camelot's demise give birth to Armaggedon? As the young airman waited beneath the terra firma for the answer, one thing was certain: A day like any other had become a day like no other. The stories Barthelette's story is extraordinary, but his was not the only life touched by Lincoln's missile base. From 1962-65, the Titan 1-A facility, along with Titan 1-B in Live Oak and Titan 1-C in Chico, joined the front lines of a tense arms race between the USA and Soviet Union known as the Cold War. Think of the scores of workers who dug up that land, built the underground structures, poured the concrete for the 160-foot-deep silos and reinforced it all with such care that this country's military leaders would boast that it could survive a nuclear attack. Consider the schoolchildren who, when they heard the sirens blare, raced to the windows in hopes of seeing the 98-foot missiles rise and stand at attention. Some even got to take field trips to tour the site. And so much more. The stories have been eclipsed by decades of controversy, frustration and anger over toxic contamination that was left behind and what to do about it now. Instead of remembering the Titans, and the role they played in 20th-century American history, many residents – particularly those in neighboring Sun City Lincoln Hills – just want to be done with it. Done, that is, with the trichloroethylene (TCE), a carcinogenic chemical used for cleaning the equipment that has seeped into the groundwater. Done with the lead and other nasty debris from when Placer County, which now owns the property, operated shooting ranges on part of it. And done with the benzene found by monitoring wells that continue to poke and prod the beleaguered property off Oak Tree Lane. After years of fits and starts, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers may finally be getting close to coming up with a plan to clean up the TCE. Sometime this summer, the county is expected to begin removing the contaminated top soil from the shooting ranges. And the state Water Board is evaluating the benzene issue. But what about the stories? 'I know that guy' As the minutes turned to hours, Barthelette became increasingly worried. Not for himself, but for his family on the East Coast. "I felt safe underground,' he says. But his family had no such protection. Besides, he adds, "You don't really think about yourself when you are young because you think you are invincible." It wasn't until he returned to base after his shift the next day that he found out the full scope of what really had happened. "I had friends on the base and I went to their house and I said, 'What's going on'?" It was true Kennedy was dead; Vice President Lyndon Johnson was now in the Oval Office. It also was true Texas Gov. John Connally had been shot, but he would survive. The rest was rumor. Like millions across the country, Barthelette spent hours watching television as it replayed the shooting, the swearing-in of Johnson aboard Air Force One and the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin. Two days after the assassination, Barthelette was still watching television when Oswald was brought to the basement of the Dallas police headquarters on his way to a more secure jail. As cameras rolled, Barthelette watched as Jack Ruby stepped from the crowd and shot Oswald. Leaning forward, he gasped. "Oh my gosh," he sputtered, "I know that guy." He had been in Dallas with friends for New Year's Eve, when they went into a bar and were greeted by a gregarious man who told them the first round was on him. The man was Jack Ruby. "He was the owner of that bar. And he had other activities going on upstairs in that building, if you get my drift. So we got our drink and visited with him a little." Barthelette was stationed in Abilene then, working with Titan's predecessor, the Atlas missiles. Designated as a Power Production Specialist, he was at Beale for only a couple years, leaving in 1964 for a posting in Germany. The facility shut down in 1965, in favor of the next generation of the more-advanced Titan II missile. He defends the revolving door of missiles across America's landscape. After all, the Cold War was all about establishing military superiority. "It sounds like a terrible waste of money but it was a deterrent," is how Barthelette puts it. After eight years in the Air Force, Barthelette went to college on the GI Bill and spent much of his career as a superintendent of Missouri state parks. "My family and I lived in the park and we moved to several parks," he says. "Back then, to get promoted we had to move to a larger park with more responsibilities, so that's pretty much what I did." Later, he was director of a nature park, worked in forestry and even taught school. He's retired now, is 82 years old and living in a town called Clever, about 20 miles from Springfield, Mo. He and Marcy, his wife of 41 years, have three children and 10 grandchildren. When he tells his story of that day 62 years ago, he admits people often call him a hero. He disagrees, saying, "I just did a job and I knew how to do it. Was it important? Yes, it was very important, there is no doubt about that." So why not a hero? "You have to remember, this was during Vietnam. People that I knew got killed. They fought and they went through hell, living in mud and dirt and rice paddies. Those guys were the heroes." Barthelette's voice becomes choked with emotion. "When they came home, they spit on them. They called them druggies. They called them baby killers." Life after the silo After Barthelette retired, he joined the Christian County library board. "What better thing to do than to build up a library system?' he explains. In his 13 years on the board, he helped grow the program from one struggling library to four well-equipped ones across the county. The talk turns to the Titan 1-A Restoration Advisory Board (RAB) and its quest to liaison with the public and advise the Army Corps of Engineers in remediating the TCE contamination. Nearly all the community members appointed to the local RAB also are retired, If he were living in Lincoln, would he volunteer to be on the RAB? He thinks he would. "I would be very concerned," he says. "Cleaning it up is the road to recovery." He also thinks he would be a tough taskmaster. "I wouldn't quit until it was cleaned up and the testing proved it." And there would be no more buttons to push. Sandi Dolbee and Gary Eckhardt are on the Restoration Advisory Board for the Titan 1-A missile site.