Fort legacy comes alive

Editor's Note: Sentinel reporter Eiji Yamashita covered the closure and subsequent demolition of Fort Roosevelt in 2005, and offers an analysis as well as a review of the film "Fort Roosevelt Requiem." The documentary premiered in Hanford for a single showing on Saturday at the Fox Theatre, and a DVD of the documentary can be purchased by going on-line to www.fortroosevelt.com. One of the preoccupations among Hanfordites over the last few decades has been the question of how to preserve its cultural heritage, especially in a time that has seen a rapid urban growth and, with it, what many perceive as the erosion of small-town charm and character.

When David Dibble asked that hard question as Fort Roosevelt's 40-year legacy was about to become nothing but a memory three years ago, his answer was a film -- "Fort Roosevelt Requiem."

In his documentary which premiered Saturday in Hanford, Dibble, a 35-year-old Hanford native and filmmaker who lives in Los Osos, sheds light on how one of the city's most beloved landmarks came about and what led to its demise as he seeks to immortalize the fort in a visual narrative.

Through its history, Hanford has endured the loss of more than one landmark.

People were dismayed in the mid-1970s, when, rather than finding a way to save it, the high school district knocked down the old administration building, which boasted a columned facade, when it failed to meet a seismic standards. The anecdotal story told to this day is that the building, supposedly too unsafe to withstand an earthquake, bounced off a wrecking ball several times.

Yet another heart-breaking moment for locals came in 2005, when the Hanford Elementary School District leveled Fort Roosevelt, a beloved pioneer era-themed nature center and wildlife refuge, which had served as an outdoor classroom for children for nearly 40 years.

Along with Superior Dairy ice cream shop and the Imperial Dynasty Restaurant in China Alley, the fort made up the triad of landmarks that put Hanford on the map.

From watching Dibble's film, you can easily see his pride in his hometown as well as his skepticism toward small-town leadership that pushes its own agenda, often over community concerns -- the kind of skepticism inherent in those who leave this town to do bigger and better things.

The film is an ambitious project clearly intended to establish Dibble as an independent filmmaker.

But it hardly looks down on Hanford, nor does it sensationalize what led to the demise of the once-famous wildlife refuge. Rather, it empathizes with the city and its lost heritage -- so much so that its title even humanizes the landmark, which enriched so many children's lives, including Dibble's, during its existence.

"I'm trying to celebrate the amazing history where the whole community came together for the sole purpose of making something special for kids," Dibble said. "I'm also honoring all the people who made it happen. I wanted the audience to feel what it was like to be at Fort Roosevelt, so I wanted to bring it back to life.

"At the same time, I wanted to show what happened at the end because to honor that whole story you have to show the dishonor that was given to it. It was built by love and destroyed by the opposite."

For Dibble, who earns a living making TV commercials, this project was an "emotional response" to the controversial closure and subsequent demolition of Fort Roosevelt, in 2005.

How it all began

It was sometime in the spring of 2005. Dibble brought home some friends hoping to show them around Hanford. That's when he learned his favorite hometown landmark had been closed by the school district leadership which wanted to develop a similar facility in Burris Park rather than rebuild the aging facility behind Roosevelt School off of Davis Street.

"I was shocked at that point," Dibble said.

Dibble has since made it his personal mission to save the fort's legacy in the form of a documentary.

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The early history of Fort Roosevelt embodies a story of volunteerism and enthusiasm that overflowed out of this community. But the birth of the fort is attributed to the vision of then-Roosevelt School Principal Jim Parks who sought to find ways to motivate children.

Parks arrived as principal in 1965. When a teachers came to him with an idea of using a pond in the back of the school as a space for children to learn and socialize, Parks gave his full support.

It was the humble beginning of the fort. It wasn't until 1973 or so when the fort took its shape as people remember it -- the pond, bridge, rocks, peacocks, turtles, other wild animals, desert plants, the authentic log cabin, the fire place and the surrounding wall made of countless telephone poles stuck into the ground. Life was breathed into the fort by the work of parents, educators, students, Navy Seabees, and Sierra National Forest Service employees who volunteered their time and donated their resources.

The film cleverly tells this story through the eyes of a child and through numerous interviews, collage of photos, newspaper clips and footage of the fort from NBC's "Real People" shot in 1979.

In other words, Fort Roosevelt had a fairy tale beginning. But it only foreshadowed the trouble to come.

Dibble's film captures the fort's history in 60 minutes. His film is not just a feel-good nostalgic film about the good days of the fort. His carefully crafted film -- undoubtedly a work of investigative journalism with an expose quality -- temerariously delves into the controversial political decision by then-HESD Superintendent Rebecca Presley and the school board to get rid of Fort Roosevelt and build one anew in Burris Park, a rural park 13 miles away from Hanford.

Controversy erupted when the school district locked up the fort in 2005, citing the safety and liability concerns of the rickety poles that made up the fortress-like wall of the nature center.

In the face of the district's efforts to permanently close the fort, the kind of passion that built the fort was rekindled in the community, this time to save it. Many community members stepped up, held countless meetings, negotiated with board members, and explored ways to preserve it. They even thought about recreating the space somewhere in downtown Hanford. All of this came to a fruitless end.

Presley at the time maintained the demolition of the fort was inevitable to safeguard the children from the termite-eaten, hazardous fort structure. Also, it was too expensive to restore the fort, which had fallen so far into disrepair, and the property the fort sat on gave little room for expansion, Presley maintained. All of these reasons might have well been legitimate.

Fort supporters blamed the district for not putting a good-faith effort in saving the structure. The Kings County grand jury blamed both the school board and fort director Heidi Arroues' group that ran the fort for allowing it to deteriorate beyond repair.

But most people would agree that when Arroues came on as director in 1983, the fort had already been falling apart. In a community taxed to the max, fundraising was a challenge, she said in retrospect during a recent interview. The political headwind made things even more difficult for those who ran the fort.

"I felt that if I left there, they would have closed it for sure. There would have been no protection for the place," Arroues said.

Provocatively enough, the film nails a dirty secret that never came to light in public at the end of the fort's life: Former school board members admit that they saw the fort as an eyesore and had always wanted -- despite its popularity -- to tear it down.

In the documentary, Jerry Frazier, who was a board member in the 1980s, says: "The school board and the administration, probably five to six years before the fort was removed, had settled on the idea that at some point they're going to find a perfect time to eliminate it from our lives."

Frazier later adds: "When the fort was removed, the superintendent was retiring. Why recall the school board? It's the superintendent they hate, and she's leaving. This way it was perfect, absolutely perfect."

Marcie Buford, also a board member during the early life of the fort, says: "If they could've gotten rid of it, it would've been earlier. But the community has a very romantic idea about it, so it stayed longer than it would have otherwise."

The film also exposes that the lawyer working for the district serves on the governing board of the Kings County Museum, which worked with the school district to develop an outdoor classroom project at Burris Park, raising a question of conflict of interest.

This puts the district leadership's integrity into question and challenges the political ethos of Hanford.

Probably in an effort to tame the anger among fort supporters, Presley at the time promised to install a memorial for Fort Roosevelt at its former site out of respect. The promise was never fulfilled -- another slap in the face to the community. Meanwhile, the district continues to work on the Burris Park project.

Presley, who retired in July 2007 and currently resides in Washington state, could not be reached for comment this week. An attempt to reach her through the school district was unsuccessful.

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Regardless of how people perceive the end of the fort, one thing certain is that those who grew up here -- whether they live in town or out of the country -- hold their childhood memories of the fort close to their hearts.

Scott Tucker, a 32-year-old Hanford native who currently resides in Bern, Switzerland, vividly recalls the intimate, rustic experience unique to the fort. Tucker, who attended Roosevelt School in second and third grade, said the fort was an "oasis" to the minds of an 8 year old.

"It was sort of a highlight of our week to go and do something in the fort as part of a class. Just because it was such a cool place, I always looked forward to it. It was like a totally different world," Tucker said in a phone interview. "Within the museum, there was an elephant's leg. I remember we could feel it, and the hair of the leg was hard, wiry hair. It was really strange at that time.

"For me, Fort Roosevelt was always this cool oasis in dusty, dry Hanford," he said.

The story of the fort through Dibble's camera lens seems to resonate well with the emotional attachment many people have with the fort. His film most brilliantly captures the flavor of the place the way people remember it.

The film has its limitations, however. For example, Dibble could not get Presley to talk, perhaps because she felt pointless to speak to Dibble, who so vehemently spoke up against her proposal to demolish the fort during the controversy and even called her "Darth Presley" in a letter to the editor published in The Sentinel. Having Presley in the film and letting her defend her position and clear any misunderstanding would have allowed this film to accomplish more.

But again, a film like this does not have to hold itself to the ostensible "objectivity" standard of mainstream newspapers. That's the beauty of a documentary of its kind.

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"Fort Roosevelt Requiem" marks not just a significant advance in Dibble's art, but also a significant contribution to chronicling the local history -- which depends heavily on independent minds like him, local historian like Martha Bentley, history hobbyists like Michael Semas and cultural heritage preservationists like Camille Wing. The film is more than a self-gratification piece of work. It is also a brave piece of investigative journalism, which is sadly a rarity in a small town like Hanford.

Children of today who had the opportunity to visit the Fort until 2005 might one day come across this documentary and finally understand what Fort Roosevelt was all about. Children of tomorrow will no doubt be intrigued and their eyes opened by the film, if they ever get to watch it.

The documentary preserves the collective memory of the local history and cultural heritage in the way no other media, including newspapers, can ever do.

In fact, the Sentinel archive and first-hand knowledge on Fort Roosevelt is limited. Only two of the news staff has ever set foot in the fort. The paper surely received countless letters from the readers calling for saving the fort during the height of controversy, but it retains no articles or photos of the early days of the fort. The only memento from the fort stashed in a newsroom filing cabinet was a small pile of letters written apparently by a group of elementary school pupils to Arroues just before the closure of the fort. One boy named Isaiah drew rain clouds over the fort and wrote: "Why did you put the fort down? Is it because of the rain? I think it is because of the rain. I hope animals are safe and not hert [sic]."

Another pupil named Nathan wrote: "Why do they half [sic] to rip it down? I liked when we found colorful rocks. I wish they wouldn't tear it upart [sic]."

Answers are not always simple.

One day, these children might make sense of it all for themselves, perhaps with the help of this film.

The reporter can be reached at 583-2429.