Alabama Public Television Presents
McClellan: A Life Saved
Special | 56m 46sVideo has Closed Captions
Explore the long and proud history of the military base in Anniston.
Explore the long and proud history of the military base in Anniston and projects bringing new life there.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Alabama Public Television Presents is a local public television program presented by APT
Alabama Public Television Presents
McClellan: A Life Saved
Special | 56m 46sVideo has Closed Captions
Explore the long and proud history of the military base in Anniston and projects bringing new life there.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
How to Watch Alabama Public Television Presents
Alabama Public Television Presents is available to stream on pbs.org and the free PBS App, available on iPhone, Apple TV, Android TV, Android smartphones, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Fire Tablet, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, and Vizio.
(people chatter indistinctly) (typewriter clatters) (phone rings) - McClellan EOD.
(people chattering) Yes, sir.
(people chattering) How many?
(gentle music) Yes Sir.
On our way.
(phone clatters) (inspirational music) - Yeah, I'd have to say Fort McClellan definitely played a big part in saving my life.
(gentle music) They gave me some direction.
Basically, it helped me grow up.
September the sixth, 1963.
At 18 years of age, came into Anniston on a bus, and bused out here to Fort McClellan.
(gentle music) We're seeing the ruins of a beautiful place.
My barracks, when I was here in '63, was right out there.
(gentle music) I would love to be able to stand here and say this was the barracks I lived in, and it looked like it did when I lived in it, but I don't think a lot of people understand what happens when a military base closes.
There's a lot of history here.
There's so many memories.
That's why we started the page on Facebook.
(gentle music) I'll tell you, it was one story, we had a guy, I met him here at Fort McClellan, and he was in Vietnam, he was a tunnel rat.
Well they've got these tunnels out in the jungle.
They had to go in and explore that, see what was in there.
When I met him, you couldn't ask for a better dressed, sharper soldier on Fort McClellan.
In fact, every month, they had what they call Soldier of the Month, every month he won Soldier of the Month 'cause he was so sharp.
I mean, starched fatigues, spit-shined boots, fresh haircut.
I mean, he was it.
It got to playing on his mind the job he did in Vietnam.
The last time I seen him, he was busted down to private.
He was hiding in the attic, in the rafter of the barracks, you know, a total wreck.
(gentle music) Turned to alcohol.
A lot of people are still fighting the Vietnam War today.
(door thumps) There's not much left.
There's really not a whole much left.
Now I'm just thankful that the chapel was bought, and restored.
Well, in '65, I came down to orders to go to Vietnam.
I'd come over here and I would walk off these steps into the sanctuary, and I'd go down to there to the altar, and I would pray.
But I just knew if God was in me going, he'd keep me safe.
(somber music) Coming to Fort McClellan saved my life, and with the decision I made to try to make something of my life, you know, to help with that endeavor, you know, and be a productive civilian after I got out.
(somber music) That's why this place will always be special to me.
(somber music) I wish it was still an active post, but since that has gone by, you can't reclaim the past, so I'd rather see this place used for good.
(inspirational music) (dramatic music) (typewriter clatters) - Mainly the Creeks and Cherokees lived in this region, and there's evidence of the mound cultures that dated back from the 1000s to the 1500s.
They've also found, at the top of one of the mountains nearby, a rock formation that looks like a snake, which archeologists believe is a spiritual relic for the Creek or the Cherokee culture that lived in this area.
In 1830, the U.S. government passed the Indian Removal Act, which basically gave them authority to exchange, forcibly, Native American land east of the Mississippi for land in Oklahoma.
Not only were they forcibly marched out with the Trail of Tears, they had to go live in a place where they had no idea how to survive.
The government constructed Camp Ship in this area, which was named after Lieutenant Ship, who died at the Battle of San Juan Hill during the Spanish American War.
It was designed to be a military preparedness camp to keep the military ready to fight, just in case peace negotiations had broke down to end the Spanish American War.
The fighting had ended, but the Peace Treaty had not been signed.
So the fear was that if the war broke out again, they would have a force that was ready and nearby Cuba, which is where most of the fighting on land took place.
It may seem odd that a military installation in the South is named after a general for the Union Army during the Civil War, but if you know a little bit about McClellan, it makes sense.
McClellan was made commanding general of the Union Army in 1861.
His theory of the war was to avoid as much bloodshed as possible because more bloodshed would make, it in his mind, harder to reconcile North and South when the fighting had stopped.
It all came to a head in March of 1862, after the Battle of Antietam.
McClellan had done very well against Lee's army there, and as Lee's army retreated from the battlefield to regroup and maybe try again, he did not pursue them, and Lincoln fired him as Commanding General and replaced him with the Ulysses S. Grant.
Alabama's third district congressman, Henry Clayton, who represented this area, started lobbying the war department in 1912.
He argued that the Choccolocco Hills, which is where McClellan is located today, would be a fine site for artillery training because of the nearby mountains.
Nothing happened for years, until 1917 when the U.S. entered World War I. Clayton's arguments were remembered and they constructed Camp McClellan to train soldiers for the war effort in Europe.
Camp McClellan's success in training military personnel to fight in World War I made it an ideal candidate for a permanent installation, which would lead to the naming of Fort McClellan in 1929.
(gentle violin music) (buoyant music) (typewriter clatters) - My father, because he had Army experiences, he was made sergeant over the CCC Camp.
Young men enlisted from all over and they were paid $30 a month.
So that was big money, you know, in the thirties.
And my father made sure that Camp McClellan was beautiful.
And to think about how they did all this with no machinery, mostly by hand, it gave them pride, it gave them a hope.
It lifted their spirits to make them feel like they were just men, you know, made men out of them, and that's what my father taught 'em all the time, that you have to be a man.
You have to stand for what's good, and you have to work for the good of the communities.
And a lot of 'em found their girlfriends in our community, and a lot of 'em got married in our community, and a lot of 'em went on to, had college educations, you know.
That's what Fort McClellan provided for those young men.
My dad was quiet.
He said what he had to say.
If he had to correct somebody, he did it individually.
They loved him, and they called him Pop 'cause he was their father to them, and he wanted them to do good things, you know, be good men, teach 'em to be men, to be fathers.
My father required that they looked certain way.
Their uniforms was always in order.
They had to maintain good conduct, always be a person that you could be counted on, you could be depended on to do the right thing.
And you could be pointed out that that man must be from Fort McClellan because of his character and because of the way he conducted himself.
(typewriter clatters) (buoyant music) - [Jimmy] Fort McClellan, August 23rd, 1942, Sunday.
Dear Mother, Fort McClellan's new amphitheater was dedicated Friday and Saturday nights this week, and it was one of the most impressive sights that I have ever seen.
The theater is on a hill.
You have no idea what a weird feeling the site of 15,000 men, marching from all directions in the dust, as the band plays over there, gives one.
I am sure anyone who saw it knows there can be but one outcome to this war.
I know it's a hard job to try to rid one's mind of war news and to stop worrying, but on the other hand, when we look at the time we have wasted, worrying about things which are beyond our control, it does look rather foolish, doesn't it?
One of the things that the army has taught me is that we are all very small pebbles on the beach, and no amount of personal anxiety will change things, or in fact, give us the answer to the question.
Love Jimmy.
(gentle piano music) (birds chirping) (melancholy string music) - When I first moved here, I didn't have any idea of a lot of things about the local area, and Dr. Kip Henriks told me that like there were murals here, that there was interesting things at Fort McClellan.
Sort of grotesque, and violent, and sexy, and were really surprised by them, and they're really interesting 'cause they're from these POWs.
And so it was sort of like all of this interesting history that was waiting to be unpacked.
So the first thing that you notice when you walk into that room is that they cover the walls around you, and so you're confronted with them.
They're looking directly at you when they're looking outside.
On the left, there's sort of this rolling, beautiful landscape with this golden light, and then on the other side, it's sort of dark and murky.
There's sort of this great contrast that you're sort of confronted with immediately when you see these murals.
- Did they make it up the background?
I don't know.
I think it came from their mind, what they had grown up with.
- The artist is Albin Sagadeen, who is a German POW.
He had an assistant, named Herbert Bolel.
A lot of what we understand about his past is his art school training in Dresden.
So the Dresden Art School is one of the really prestigious art schools in Germany.
The Dresden School, in the early 20th century, sort of started getting a facelift, started to modernize.
We are allowed to mess with the form to get that greater expression.
And we see some of that in these murals where the hands and bodies are exaggerated so that they can express better the ideas the artist is trying to get at.
- They were so unusual, it was different.
It wasn't like any other artwork that you would find in any other bar anywhere.
- And we have stories of people coming in and watching him paint, but we aren't totally sure which part he was working on.
- That was part of the bar, that whole, that area, you know, which we probably wouldn't have been allowed to go in a bar anyway at that age.
We just kind of walked in and somebody would say, "Girls, you know you're not allowed in here."
- This is a treasure to our local area, and really to the history of POWs in the United States.
And we have a chance to talk about it, and see it, and have access to it in a way that wouldn't have been possible before now.
It would be horrible to have a beautiful thing, and know that it's beautiful and worthwhile, and then decide to lose it.
(melancholy music) (typewriter clatters) (gentle music) - The cemetery was opened in 1917 with Fort McClellan.
The first soldier to be buried there was not a casualty of war.
He was the casualty of the Spanish flu.
Edward Roskey was the first to be buried, in 1918.
He was a Russian emigre, and he was drafted to serve.
Only two of those buried at the Fort McClellan Cemetery were actually killed in military action.
A large number of the burials at Fort McClellan are children.
Many of the infants that are buried there are buried with only their father's name.
Son of, daughter of, the mother isn't listed.
The child isn't named, and that gets to me.
The idea is, behind Wreaths Across America, we want to honor those who have served, we want to remember them, and we want to teach the youth what service means.
There are 355 headstones at Fort McClellan.
Because we were successful in finding people to donate enough money to order 353 wreaths, and we placed those wreaths, but two of those headstones are adorned with the star of David, and out of respect for that religious tradition, we placed rocks on the top of those headstones instead of a wreath.
There's another cemetery at Fort McClellan, it's the German-Italian POW cemetery.
There are 21 Italian and German soldiers buried there.
- My mother was a nurse's aide during World War II, here at the camp hospital, and she was assigned to the POW ward.
There was one soldier that came, he was sad all the time, and then one day she went to work and he wasn't there, and she asked about him, and they said he died.
Stayed in the hospital for three weeks, collected all of his barbiturates for pain medicine, and took 'em at one time.
It was a suicide.
So the soldier my mother knew, he was buried here.
His family didn't take him home, and he's there by himself.
- The third Sunday of November is the German Memorial Day, and every year a German representative and an Italian representative come to the Fort McClellan POW cemetery, and they lay wreaths there to honor their war dead.
- These guys who are buried there, wish we would know more about 'em, but we don't.
And these are people who were forgotten.
I remember the first time I went there, they were hundreds of people there who came to the ceremony.
They had small presentations from German soldiers, would come from Huntsville.
We had people playing trumpets for... That was my first encounter.
And then we got together and formed a Fort McClellan POW committee.
- [Michael B. Abrams] The cemetery did not always look as good as it does now.
A lot of money was spent to bring the cemetery back to V.A.
cemetery standards.
- To me, it's more historical.
It keep the history alive, you know.
If the story isn't told, it dies.
- Any place where you're willing to work hard, to sweat, maybe even bleed, holds a special place in your heart, and in your memories.
And so many people have done that at Fort McClellan.
That is something that we can wear as a badge of honor, and to see Fort McClellan stamped on that badge of honor is a great tribute to all of the people who have contributed to the United States of America and this community.
(somber music) (upbeat percussion music) (typewriter clatters) - Stand up.
- One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four.
- General MacArthur said that of all of the Army personnel, the women worked harder and complained less than any of the men.
After Pearl Harbor, Congress decided that yes, it probably would be a good idea.
This was really the beginning of having women as an official part of the army.
Back in the forties, most women stayed at home, raised a family.
Being at home with a family is a wonderful profession, but women can also do other things.
At the very beginning, they tried to find a place for the WACs to train... - [Presenter] And when they came back, it was to a new, permanent home, Fort McClellan, in Anniston, Alabama.
It was the first WAC headquarters, especially built to suit its needs.
- [Linda Buckner] 1958, McClellan became the official WAC training center.
- The training that the WACs will receive here will enable the Women's Army Corps to meet successfully every challenge that tomorrow may bring.
- I had been a high school French and Spanish teacher, so they started to cut back, budget-wise, and the first things to go, art, music, and foreign languages.
So I knew (laughs) who was going to have to find another job.
I chose the Army, and I came to Fort McClellan.
I was in the Women's Officer orientation class, number nine.
When I was in training, I found out where the band building was, and the Commander happened to be there.
I had a musical background, and so I told her who I was, and she said, "You know, I'm being transferred to a new position.
How would you like to take my place?"
I think you would make a good commander of the band.
The WACs stayed there until they disbanded, and integrated all of the female soldiers into the army back in 1978.
I really never thought I would end up at Fort McClellan for as long as I was.
After I was at the band, I met Jerry Buckner.
He's the logistics officer.
Time wore on, and we dated, and we ended up getting married on November the fifth of 1977.
We were married at Centurion Chapel, which was over in the old military police area.
Our first son was born, Noble Army Hospital, up on the hill, there at Fort McClellan, and then a year and a half later, our second son, David was born.
So in my life journey, a lot of good things happened at Fort McClellan.
(dramatic music) - The chemical core of the army, at times, has been underappreciated, but as people relearn the lessons of chemical warfare from World War I, the threat of chemical warfare in World War II... - [Presenter] In the marshaling area, each man drew a new gas mask.
- Fort McClellan and the U.S. Army Chemical Corps would realize we need to carve out time for chemical training.
- [Presenter] This post is the home of the Chemical Core School, which provides instruction in chemical warfare theories and techniques.
- With the wisdom and the vision of General Jerry Watson, they were able to get the Army's approval to build a chemical training facility.
- You know, coming to the chemical school, I was put in a position where I was responsible for training Officer Basic Corps, the initial entry soldiers, advanced courses, on the decontamination techniques.
- [Michael B. Abrams] A battlefield with bombs and bullets, that's bad enough, but you inject chemical warfare, and that creates just nightmares on the battlefield.
- [Presenter] In concentrated education, they studied chemical warfare.
- I went to Vietnam in April '66, training you in various types of chemicals.
The circumstances you put in can either make you or break you.
You grow up fast when you're put in a war zone.
- Fort McClellan responded by training people to work with smoke as cover, to work with flame as cover, to be prepared to decontaminate.
- You know, as my wife says, you never know what you will need until you need it.
I was standing in front of a class, I was training soldiers.
Yeah, it had quite an impact.
It helped me, and it prepared me to be able to work with civilians when I got out in the training field.
- And while that was open at Fort McClellan, thousands and thousands of soldiers, men and women, were trained to survive and to deal with a chemical contaminated battlefield.
(rhythmic dramatic music) (typewriter clatters) (gentle music) - [Karen Abrams] Next year, it'll be 50 years that we've known each other.
- We ought to celebrate.
- We should.
Where do you wanna go?
(Michael laughs) I grew up in Alexandria, which is just down the street, high school, all the way through 12th grade, and graduated and went to work at Fort McClellan.
- I grew up on the Chicago South side in Blue Island, Illinois.
When I first joined the Army, I had no idea where I was going to go, and I found out that I was going to Fort McClellan.
I looked up Fort McClellan in the encyclopedia and it said, "Home of the Women's Army Corps," and I thought that could be a very interesting assignment.
And then I was in the office for just a couple of months, and Karen walks literally into my life.
- So I went up to the public affairs office for my first interview.
- Karen walked right past my desk.
- I didn't even notice him, sorry.
- (laughs) But walked right past my desk to go to the major's office, and I kinda stood up from my desk and I said, "That's the one."
(laughs) - My parents, when I went to work out there, "Now you're not gonna marry a soldier because you're not moving away from here."
They were work people, and you went to work, and you went home, and you had your life out there, and you didn't have anything to do with 'em after work.
He came to my house one time and my dad threatened to get a shotgun and have him leave, but he left.
(laughs) I don't think he knew how to leave.
He just didn't, he didn't wanna leave, so.
- I arrived in June of 1975, I guess we met in August, and then the following July, the Army said, "It's time for you to go to Germany.
Oh man, a wrench in the works.
I was really disappointed that I was leaving, but I made sure I had Karen's phone number and address, and I went to Germany.
- I thought, when he left, that I would never see him again.
That would be it.
And then I started getting these letters, and every week, or every couple of days, I'd get another letter, and that continued for an entire year.
And I started writing him back, and this is what resulted.
(pair laughs) - Without Fort McClellan, you know, we would not have met.
We've got two beautiful children, and we've got a good home life.
Our own spiritual lives have grown, because I think ultimately, we compliment each other.
I'm very, very pleased with what we have.
(gentle music) (dramatic music) - I was a combat military policeman in Vietnam in 1965 and 1966.
(dramatic music) - '68 and '69, we had a very close knit unit that was sort of a self-sustaining combined arms group.
We had helicopters, infantry, rocket artillery.
We lost 14 men out of my company, on the same day.
So it was tough.
(dramatic music) - During the main part of the day, I was an instructor at the military police school.
I taught primarily weapons, marksmanship, care and maintenance of weapons.
I knew my subjects, and I wanted the people that I was teaching, I wanted them to know their subjects well, and do well for the military and for the public.
- The military police, their importance to the battlefield commanders has been known throughout the history of the Army, and the people who trained the military police at Fort McClellan, they prepare soldiers to deal with those that will become prisoners of war, to deal with domestic issues.
When it's not a battlefield situation, it's something because of trouble in the family, or a crime at the post exchange.
(gentle music) - I come to the military police school as their command sergeant major.
I was given an inordinate amount of authority from Fort McClellan.
Well at that point, I had 28 years of service.
So I knew how to manage.
I had the respect within two months.
I've always believed in, let's do something, not you do something.
- You need to want to do the job.
I want to help people.
I want to learn how to do a crime scene.
I want to learn how to lead a convoy.
I want to learn how to do these things to get the job done correctly, and in a military manner, and in a proper timeframe.
(weapon blasts) It's just something I like to do.
McClellan, with all the facilities and everything it had, was just an absolutely perfect military installation.
Why on earth would anybody want to close this?
(typewriter clatters) (gentle music) - I was born in Anniston, Alabama, and I grew up in public housing.
My father worked in the cotton mill.
I was going into the 11th grade.
I joined the Navy, 17 years old.
My last tour of duty in the Navy was Vietnam.
(twangy country music) When I came back, I worked for the Oceanographic Office, and then decided I didn't want to go any further without finishing my undergraduate degree, and came to Jacksonville.
JSU had this extraordinary English department.
It also had an extraordinary biology department, and so I was lucky that those were the two things that I was in most interested in, in school.
One of the books that was assigned was "Biological Conservation," by David Ehrenfeld, and that book changed my life.
I understood that there was a job to be done with conserving the biology of the planet.
So I was working for the Health Department and Fort McClellan had a landfill that was just really very poorly operated.
When I stepped on the base, they said, "Well, you're the head of our environmental department now."
We developed an environmental program and I went to work for the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, a job, which I later held (laughs) myself.
Well, the Army clearly had grown installations after World War II, and had excess capacity.
I couldn't stop McClellan from being closed.
Nobody in the Pentagon was from Fort McClellan, except me.
(chuckles) So I had an interest in it.
- I remember the day I met Ray.
He came in from the Pentagon.
What he brought to McClellan, arguably, was the best gift ever, and it was in excess of $200 million for the Unexploded Ordinance cleanup.
So when you're looking for a bomb that didn't blow up, you're using what's called a magnetometer.
Is it a bomb?
Is it a rock?
(chuckles) So you have to err on the side of caution, and that's why the whole UXO cleanup was so expensive, and it continues to this very day.
- So I was asked to come to the White House under the George H.W.
Bush administration.
And when the Clinton administration came in, they kept me on, and I found an opportunity to use every second of my life oriented toward helping communities.
I spent six years doing that, and had a farewell in the Oval Office with my partner, speaking to the man who could change the world.
And on my programs, he did.
Well, my personal hope is for the protection and preservation of two things, and that is the environmental integrity that is Fort McClellan.
And second is the preservation of these architecturally significant buildings.
I worked for the Secretary of the Army.
I worked for what was good for the Army, and that was my mission, and I would go under barbed wire, over barbed wire, through mud, through rain to get the Army's mission done.
If I could help Anniston in the process, I was all for it.
(dramatic music) (typewriter clattering) (patriotic violin music) - For most of the 20th century, Fort McClellan was a major economic player.
You had this massive structure that had people coming and going from all over the world.
It was the heartbeat of the area.
(patriotic violin music) - I went to work with the thought that this will be a long career for me, and it was.
(patriotic violin music) And I was just so enamored, if you will.
Driving in the gate, there would be an MP, when he would come out of the guard shack and he would wave you through.
If you were military, he would salute you.
There's a lamp that always stayed on in the guard shack.
The lamp is still there, and it's on.
I came to be a great supporter of the word training and what it means, because it's just so important.
It can mean life or death.
(patriotic violin music) - First of all, I was working for the Secretary of the Army at the time.
We were closing iconic installations, like the Presidio of San Francisco, which is one of the most scenic places in the city of San Francisco.
We were closing from Presidio to Fort McClellan, and a lot in between.
There were excess capacity.
The Army couldn't really close an installation on its own because communities were so wedded to them, and the jobs that they provided, the economic drivers that they were.
Congress had to pass the base realignment and enclosure commission, the BRAC, and those were made up of people who knew the national security issues, who knew installation issues.
They were really experts in all of this, and they made recommendations on which installations to close.
(patriotic violin music) Fort McClellan was always a smaller installation.
(gentle music) I said at the time that I was at the Pentagon, the Army of the future was always gonna be fewer larger installations.
And so McClellan got on that list, in BRAC one.
(gentle music) - It really was a hard, hard thing to deal with.
All of these things, bit by bit started closing.
It felt like it was dying, piece by piece.
(somber music with accompanying harmonizing vocals) - Well, there was a very real economic impact.
A lot of people were making good money.
There were people that were depressed, there were people that were saddened, there were people that were laid off.
(somber music) - Everybody within the Pentagon system had installations that they thought were very special, for one reason or another.
(somber music) And Anniston was special to me, A, because I'd grown up here, and B, I knew what the economic impact was gonna be.
(traffic humming) (heavy machinery beeping) (buoyant music) (chainsaw buzzes) - So I feel like you're called to be where you are, and when presented with these opportunities, I think it's your responsibility to capitalize and to bring these people together.
And the strength of the governments to work with the private sector, to preserve a history there.
And I see that Fort McClellan has a lot of opportunity out there.
Many buildings have been preserved, many properties have been saved, but there are still many to go, a lot of work to be done.
- [Speaker] Dear Mr. Secretary, Mayor of the city of Birmingham, Alabama has written to me, commending those members of the United States Army from Fort McClellan, these members of the 142nd Ordinance detachment approached six dynamite bombs in Birmingham, and disarmed each bomb.
Several of the devices were within minutes or even seconds of explosion.
Their performance on this occasion of peril is an outstanding example of the dedication and devotion to duty so characteristic of the men and women in our armed services.
Sincerely, Lyndon B. Johnson.
(typewriter clatters) (energetic music) - Kemet Movie Works is the brainchild of Kat Williams, the brilliant standup comedian who I have the great fortune of working with.
I feel like this is his signature life project.
- It's gonna be one of the greatest things that I personally have ever done.
- It's a place for filmmakers to make comedies, dramas, real stories.
- 30 buildings, three million indoor square feet.
Yeah, we just have a wonderful, blessed space at the foothills of the mountains, and it's really magical.
- Kat Williams was made for a time such as this.
He saw this property, and in his mind, I'm sure he had a vision, and he was like, "This is it."
(upbeat music) - Alabama's beautiful.
It speaks for itself and it has a lot of charm and a lot of personality.
Ultimately, it's never a bad thing being close to Atlanta.
Atlanta is a huge travel hub, a huge hub for the entertainment industry.
- We're trying to create something where it can provide a platform for a lot of people to show what they do.
- And the mere fact that there will be an office on this property that is taking, you know, pitches and ideas, and can actually green light an idea, that's a big deal.
That's what all the students here at Jacksonville State, and in the area, that's what they're learning to do.
- When this takes shape, it's gonna change the lives of millions.
It's mind blowing, you know what I mean?
It's like, this is history.
(dramatic music) - In 1971, the Alabama APOST Commission created a training to certify law enforcement officers.
October, 1972 was the first law enforcement academy at Jacksonville State University.
Our mission is to train law enforcement officers throughout the state.
The first six weeks is basically all academic.
Once we hit week seven, with firearms, through week 14, is all our tactical training.
Defensive tactics, driving, building searches, active shooter training, traffic stops, crime scenes investigations.
So you get all the fundamentals of the books, but now you're putting all that knowledge into working.
My first thing that I tell the recruits is our mission is to take care of others.
So we have to set our lives and our problems aside, stop worrying about themselves and start worrying about others.
Focus on the problem that you have to deal with.
It's nothing about you.
And so you have team leaders, you have squad leaders, so eventually you are going to get a leadership position.
So Fort McClellan, it meets our needs in a lot of aspects because we're away from the general public.
So when we're at Fort McClellan, we have a lot of secluded areas that we can run police cars to go do traffic stops, and then we use the old Starship buildings for our building clearing, or active shooter training.
It made it a very good fit.
The future of the academy I see is still strong as long as we keep the good leadership that we have with Anniston and McClellan, and also JSU has been a strong supporter of us also.
- Listen to this, this corner- - I love what I'm doing.
I did not become a police officer to be rich, but my heart is in training and to make people better.
And my motto is, "Be better tomorrow than you were today."
And that's what I try to get across to the recruits.
Don't just think about it, because anybody can think about changing.
It's actually doing it.
(dramatic music) (cheerful strumming music) - Howard Core was a cellist and a music teacher.
He married my mother when I was three, and he literally started the business in our basement, and it grew, and we've tried to keep that family culture of truly looking out for our customer.
We have two different perspectives here, one is the scientific, read a book, exactly what the specs need to be, and then we have the player side, and there is an interpretation.
It's an art and a science all put together, every day.
(upbeat guitar music) - Music and arts are so formative in developing a child, not just academically, but socially and creatively, and really, I think helps develop them into young, well-rounded adults that serve the community and the world really well.
(strumming music) - Just about every instrument that's in this room and in our warehouse will end up with a student, a beginner, an intermediate.
What we see when we go to the conventions is see the camaraderie and the joy that they have and the love they have for their instrument.
Musicians that travel with them and they play together everywhere, they have real bond, and it's really a special relationship.
- When I met Alex Weidner, he was looking for a place, and I thought, "Man, I know the building he needs to be in."
- Fort McClellan.
Wow.
We were looking for more space.
We had outgrown, we'd moved into this elementary school, and we had to add on to it, and we added on again, and we were just like, "What do we do next?"
- And we went over there and I think at first, he was, his breath was taken away, not because it was beautiful, but because of the mold in the building.
(laughs) - We moved in McClellan.
It was really functionality of business, finding an opportunity.
Here's some space, we had to give it a ton of love and care.
It took us about a year and a half before we could actually start utilizing the place.
- He was such a creative person and he had such a creative team, he could see, and it wasn't too long after that, they moved in.
- But once we did, we never looked back, and it's been amazing.
We now have a campus of nine buildings around us.
Well the future of Howard Core, we hope, is long and prosperous for everyone that we employ and that we take care of.
- Everyone here, at work, feels like a family, and the way we treat our customers as very family oriented.
We're coming up on our 20 year anniversary, so to thank people have been here that long as well, it's definitely more than business.
It becomes, again, about the family.
We're so grateful.
(gentle strumming music) - Mountain Longleaf National Wildlife Refuge was established in 2003 with the purpose of maintaining Longleaf habitat and ecosystems around Fort McClellan.
With the closure of the fort, there was a fairly significant push to try to find the best that was left on Fort McClellan here in for natural resources.
- So a Longleaf pine is a hard, soft wood.
It's an old growth pine that once was coveted by ship makers for its tar and its stiff wood.
It was used in housing market quite a bit, and because it's an old lived species, it takes 30 to 40 years for it to grow, and so the industry changed to other pine species.
The whole southeast used to be covered by Longleaf pine habitat, and it makes a really good habitat for wildlife.
But because it's been replaced by other fast growing species, we've seen a major reduction in the pine system.
So we're working hard to build the ecosystem back up.
We've got four areas that the Army Corps of Engineers and McClellan Development Authority, and myself, and other partners have been monitoring.
- [Bill Garland] We've learned that finding old growth Longleaf is one thing, but maintaining it there under a management program is extremely difficult.
- [Steven Trull] The refuge works with JSU professors, getting classes out here on the refuge for educational purposes, and we love that.
I'm very thankful for what I have with Jacksonville State University.
(gentle music) - As we retired, we started looking for areas we could settle.
We have aging parents and had not had the chance in 30 years to be near our family.
Our kids had not had the chance to live in Alabama.
We feel like it was obviously God's plan for us to move home and be here.
This is my living room.
This is the old Commanding General's house at Fort McClellan.
When we had the opportunity to buy it, we did.
All the commanding generals at Fort McClellan have lived here.
I know General Clark was the first female, two star general, and she was one of the CGs who lived here.
General Buckner was one of the commanding generals of Fort McClellan.
He ended up being sent forward to the Battle of Okinawa.
So General Buckner, unfortunately, his claim to fame lives on his history as the highest ranking Army officer ever killed in action.
Just a long legacy of great leaders who served out of this house.
I joined the National Guard and progressed through ROTC at Jacksonville State.
That would've been my junior year of college.
Fort McClellan really enriched the experience of the Jacksonville state's ROTC because we had an active army base right here, right beside us at our disposal.
We had all the experience of the folks who served here, and now I'm a retired guy and I working for Army Cyber, and trying to continue on contributing any way I can.
Since I moved here, I underappreciated how much this place means to some people.
Many of 'em have retired in the local community here and still think very highly of the post.
And I take it very seriously that this house should be maintained in a manner, befitting of a commanding general, even though one no longer lives here, because people drive by and they see where their old commanding general lived.
It's been a pretty smooth transition.
I can still hear the bugle calls during the day at Fort McClellan's National Guard base.
That gives me great comfort, as an old soldier.
We love this house and this is, you know, we don't plan to move again.
This has been the connective tissue that's allowed us to maintain that connection with the Army and our home, and it really has meant a lot to us in retirement.
- So in 1807, the Guard had begun.
(weapons blast) Mainly it was militia groups, but it all pulled together as a guard unit.
And then it was 1903 where Governor Jelks of Alabama deemed it the Alabama National Guard.
We actually predate when Alabama became a state.
So it's a dual hat.
We not only serve the state, but we also serve the country.
We serve the nation.
The biggest things that we do for the state, you're looking at disaster response, any kind of domestic response that we have to do.
We are not just soldiers, we are different professions all coming together, typically one weekend a month, two weeks out of the year, but in that time, you never let off the gas.
I think when 9-11 occurred, it didn't take long where all the units were activated immediately just to provide security for their own installation.
And then it was shortly after Hurricane Ivan, we got the activation to go to Iraq.
So now we're going to the national side.
(weapons blast) - Weapons unsafe.
- We take that history into effect of everything that what was Fort McClellan, being the premier training center of the South, when something happened, we knew how to react because we had done that intense training the entire time.
We're still wanting to retain that tradition.
We are right now, in a building that was the headquarters for Women's Army Corps.
General Clark was one of the first females to take command of a post, much less, she was over the Women's Army Corps, but then she became the commander of Fort McClellan.
Her office is two doors down.
The history here and the appreciation that people have for General Clark is just, you know, it's unwavering.
So we have been working with the McClellan Development Authority and some of the local cities and everything, the leadership, and we've been able to acquire additional properties.
So that's gonna be expanding.
But Remington Hall has that history, and that's one of the things I'm really hoping we can do something with it.
And the fact that we're getting so many soldiers, I think we're looking at close to 190,000 soldiers that came in this past training year.
But the biggest, I guess, misnomer is that people think this is just the Alabama National Guard, and it's not.
So we have National Guard units from out of state.
We have reserve units that are in state and out of state that are coming.
We have police departments, county officers, that are coming to get their training.
We've also got the Marines, we also have the Navy.
To a degree, we have the Air Force that'll come in, and they all do their training here.
So we're not just limited to the Alabama National Guard.
It's just hard to capture just how many people have come through here, and how many lives have been affected by the training.
So I think the pride in knowing that maybe we get looked back and saying, well they did, they did keep that tradition going.
- We train over 60,000 students a year.
We train more than 1.3 million students since the CDP has been there.
We train students in healthcare, healthcare leadership courses, hospital emergency response training, hazardous material technologies, operations courses.
- First responders, law enforcement, firefighters from all over the nation to train, and I'm very proud that they go back out to where they came from and help save lives, and I think that's very good for the state of Alabama that we have this asset here in the state of Alabama that many people don't know.
- Well the CDP is the Center for Domestic Preparedness.
What we like to say is we train the best for the worst.
We train that law enforcement officer, we train that medical professional, we train the hazardous material technician for what could be the worst day of their lives on any given day.
(water hissing) - If you recall back to the Tokyo subway sarin gas attack in the 1995, that was sort of the impetus to do first responder training here.
- The sarin incident caused the nation to ask how would we respond?
So what we did at that point in time, we developed a course, called the Chemical Biological Countermeasures Course.
- We have the COBRA facility, which is our Chemical Ordinance Biological Radiological Training Facility.
We have a subway scene in there.
So when you put your personal protective equipment on, your mask on, the peripheral vision from side left and right, it makes you feel like you're actually in the subway system.
Then we have the Advanced Responder Training Complex, and in that facility, we have a street scene that kind of mirrors the city of Anniston, Noble Street.
We also received the Noble Training Facility.
That's the hospital, which is the only one in the nation that trains healthcare professionals in mass casualties.
What we train them to do is how to manage those resources in the hospital when you have multiple casualties coming in, like you saw at the Las Vegas shooting.
That's how we train our healthcare professionals here, for those type of incidents, and how to handle those and manage those.
- [Speaker] All right, well, we'll take care of you.
- I think the CDP is one of the best kept secrets.
This is what we call the premier training facility that most people don't know about.
There are a number of healthcare professionals, law enforcement personnel that have said what they learned at the CDP has helped them in certain situations.
The training obtained at the CDP does have an impact on whether lives are saved or not.
- Fort McClellan was just the place.
- You just can't let go of these important times or these important places.
And it's not just about telling the history, it's even more important to focus in on the future.
- I'm excited about the possibilities and seeing this revitalized and preserved, and the possibilities are limitless.
- It was just like an extended family that we had.
I'm very thankful for the years of Fort McClellan.
- Fort McClellan has lived through some trying times.
That's a testament to this community.
It's a testament to the military leadership, and we still have the military showplace of the South to be proud of.
(dramatic music) (weapons blast) Military, political, community worked together to create the survivor that Fort McClellan continues to be.
(inspirational music) (inspirational music continues) (inspirational music continues)
McClellan: A Life Saved - Preview
Preview: Special | 30s | Explore the history of the military base in Anniston. (30s)
Providing Support for PBS.org
Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipSupport for PBS provided by:
Alabama Public Television Presents is a local public television program presented by APT