Building Bridges

PORT HUENEME —  Standing on a chair at the U.S. Navy base, Shelbii Cunningham crinkled her nose and gave her best tough-girl scowl. With a face smeared with green and brown camouflage paint, she was ready for war. At least until nap time.

“Oh, she’s always ready for a battle,” Merri Cunningham said of her precocious towheaded 2-year-old. “She usually starts one.”

Merri Cunningham and her husband, Sean, were among the hundreds who poured onto the base Saturday for the 14th annual Seabee Summerfest, held at the Naval Construction Battalion Center to help the public understand what a Seabee operation is all about.

“This is our chance to show the community how their tax dollars are being spent,” base spokeswoman Teri Reid said. “Even though this is a Navy town, a lot of people don’t know what we do. This way, they get a firsthand look at us and at how we help defend the nation.”

As support for the Navy and Marine Corps, the 9,400 active Navy Seabees are trained military personnel who specialize in construction, but are skilled in fighting.

Their motto is summed up in four words: “We build, we fight.”

Before a military operation begins, the Seabees are sent in to build the roads, bridges and other buildings needed to establish camp.

They also help those in need around the world, drilling wells for fresh water or repairing dilapidated buildings.

Ed Rouch of Oxnard, who served as a Seabee during the 1960s, said he thinks many people believe the military was created only to fight and destroy, and hopes events like this one will give them a new perspective.

“People have a misconception when they see guys in the green uniforms,” Rouch said. “They don’t see us out there helping people and building roads, drilling wells, repairing orphanages. That’s 99% of what we do.”

About 15,000 people are expected to attend the two-day festival, which is free to the public and ends today at 4 p.m.

A full-dress military parade kicked off the celebration Saturday afternoon with a bang.

Booms from an M2-.50 caliber machine gun echoed across the base, as two Seabees fired blanks from a Humvee during the parade procession.

“My ears, my ears,” shouted Kevin Sterlins, 9, of Thousand Oaks, hands pressed against his head.

But Kevin and dozens of other startled children forgot about the noise when the shooting stopped and scrambled onto the blacktop to pick up the 6-inch shell casings left scattered on the street.

Perhaps the biggest draw was the Comstock, a 609-foot, 16,000-ton transport ship.

Built in 1945, the ship is designed to transport combat equipment around the world and can carry up to 700 people.

It was an impressive sight, but most of the little boys climbing up and down the ship’s ladders were overcome with excitement at seeing a large machine gun bolted to its deck and aimed out to sea.

“Oh man, whoa,” said Steven Trockman, 7, his eyes growing large. “What’s that for?”

His brother, Sean Trockman, 10, was busy trying to lift a 60-pound machine gun sitting nearby.

“I think that thing weighs more than you do,” said grandfather Frank Schrage, an Oxnard resident and former Navy man himself, from 1943 to 1947.

Schrage said it meant a lot to him to share this experience with his grandchildren.

“It gives them an appreciation of what’s going on out here,” Schrage said. “We dearly need that. People of our nation have distanced themselves from the military and I think it’s a shame. They are our line of defense and I admire the guys who are out here.”