The Kennedy Bunker Hidden history by the sea
BY STEVE SHEPPARD INDEPENDENT WRITER
It's inconspicuous enough out there by the ocean. Last week, surrounded by the caravan of the carnival, it seemed little more than a backdrop to the motor homes parked before it. You'd really have to be looking for it to find it.

ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent Steve Holdgate stands inside the entrance of the former Presidential bomb shelter.

Which is just what the Navy had in mind when it was built.

In its unshowy way, it fits nicely into Nantucket's understated past, where sea captains' houses blend into the fog and Quakers in their cemetery preferred anonymity over headstones. What is known as the Kennedy Bunker, moreover, is a remnant of the more recent past, and pretty much all that's left of the former Navy Base at Tom Nevers; a Cold War leftover and a reminder of the very real dangers the world can pose.

From the outside the bunker is, as Melville would say, a mere hillock, a mound covered by grass and brush. It became town property after the Navy left Nantucket in 1976 and the town subsequently bought the base's roughly 40 acres of land for $525,000 in 1980. What's left of the old Navy base is today enjoyed by islanders for recreational purposes: the demolition derby is an anticipated annual event, as is the county fair; the softball and baseball diamonds are used most nights in the summer.

ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent Blending perfectly into its surroundings, the bunker is a literal example of building with Nantucket in mind.

The Navy's other buildings have gone over the years, victims of either neglect or erosion, but the Kennedy Bunker remains. In an article written in 1996 for Nantucket Magazine ("A Doomsday Shelter in the Sand"), writer Lawrence J. Whelan made note of the town's plans "to convert the deserted facility into a large recreational area," but lamented that "so far, no plans have included the preservation of the John F. Kennedy bunker as a historical site."

While it is not officially a historical site today, Whelan and the rest of us can take heart that the bunker has indeed been preserved.

But before we speak of its preservation, we must review its history.

COURTESY OF THE NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION The U.S. Navy base at Tom Nevers in the 1950s, showing several Quonset huts. The Kennedy Bunker is pretty much a buried Quonset hut.

According to Whelan's article, the bunker was built specifically for President John F. Kennedy:

"With Kennedy's election, doomsday planners faced a problem. They had to figure out how to protect the President while he vacationed at his family compound on Cape Cod. Time was of the essence in protecting the president from a Soviet first strike. … Planners looked for a secure facility that would not be a primary target and was only minutes away by helicopter. They found it in a small naval facility twenty-five miles offshore on the island of Nantucket."

By June 1962, Whelan wrote, Kennedy's Nantucket bunker was completed, although not in the style of the typical fallout shelter. "Technicians soon found that the high water table meant that the new structure could not be completely buried. As a result, when the bunker was completed a large earthen mound protruded from the ground. … From the outside, the bunker offered few clues to its real purpose. It looked like a typical military ammunition bunker."

When the President was assassinated a year later, the bunker, according to Whelan, "was maintained as a fallout shelter for base personnel, but over the next decade technological developments began to make the bunker and the entire Nantucket installation obsolete."

Steve Albright remembers the bunker well. He was stationed at the old Navy Base in 1966 and '67. "We used it as a locker room for the football team," he said. (In those days, men from the Navy base regularly played the Nantucket High School team as part of the schedule.)

Steve Holdgate remembers it, too. As a child he was taken to the bunker on a school field trip. "I have vivid memories. It was so unique," he said. "When I came as a kid there were still provisions stored along the walls."

Holdgate also has memories of the bunker when it was in, shall we say, less than perfect condition. "Kids would party in here," he said. "Once when I came back from college I went to a party here."

After the Navy moved out, the bunker was treated, more or less, as a white elephant that no one knew what to do with. Various town departments used it for storage, but it was pretty much sealed off to discourage unauthorized access. By 1996, when Whelan wrote his story, the bunker was in sad shape indeed. "After years of neglect, the preservation and restoration of the shelter would be an expensive proposition. … Since 1980, the door of the John F. Kennedy bunker has been sealed, entombing in darkness a forgotten relic of the Cold War."

"Once you closed the doors, it was pitch dark in here," Holdgate says. He should know - he helped clean it out.

Holdgate is a charter member and current president of the 10-year-old Nantucket Hunting Association, a non- profit dedicated to preserving "the traditions of ethical hunting and maintain the balance of Nantucket's wildlife resources." Since its inception, the Nantucket Hunting Association has helped raise awareness of safe hunting practices and promoted land conservation. Working closely with the Nantucket Conservation Foundation, for instance, the Nantucket Hunting Association has held controlled deer hunts at Ram's Pasture, where 20 members are stationed at predetermined areas to help keep the island's deer population in check. By setting an example of responsible hunting, the Nantucket Hunting Association hopes to preserve customs that have been a way of life on the island for centuries.

It also needed a place to meet occasionally.

The town's Parks and Recreation department, which oversees the playing fields at the old Navy Base, has jurisdiction over the unused and uncared for Kennedy Bunker. To Park and Rec, the Nantucket Hunting Association's need could serve two purposes: clean out and refurbish the historic bunker and the town would lease the bunker to the association until a proper clubhouse was built.

So far, the arrangement has benefited both sides. A piece of history has been carefully preserved, and the Nantucket Hunting Association has a place for its maps, bylaws and trophies. By its presence as caretakers, the Nantucket Hunting Association also ensures the bunker will not fall into disrepair or to the whims of vandals.

As Holdgate points out, members took the restoration project very seriously, using original light fixtures when possible and bringing the bunker back to its austere and understated appearance. "Where do I begin," Holdgate said, when he recalled the shape the bunker was in. "There were moldy boxes of paperwork; graffiti all over the walls written in black soot from the candles kids burned in here; spare truck tires."

Today, thanks to the Nantucket Hunting Association, the Kennedy Bunker is in near pristine condition. "They've done a great job," Parks and Recreation director Jim Manchester said last week. "The place was a disaster. They cleaned up the space … and it is a piece of history."

While the bunker may appear a bit rustic from the outside, on the inside it is like stepping back to the days when the Navy tracked Soviet subs off the island's eastern shore. Cleaned and painted, the opening to the bunker looks as it must have when it was built in the 1960s. Traveling through the serpentine tunnels, the feeling is of being on a submarine until the main room is suddenly revealed. You realize the bunker is pretty much an underground Quonset hut. The atmosphere, however, is of a place frozen in time; similar to the sense of Churchill's preserved war room in London, although President Kennedy is not known to have ever peeked inside the bunker built for him. (If he had, few people even then would have known. In its time, the bunker was top secret, even to base personnel, who were told it was built for the storage of gas cylinders.)

Today, the American flag flying nearby is a reminder of the bunker's place in history. Although the former bomb shelter remains hidden from view, it remains as yet another symbol

of Nantucket's unique heritage. I

For more information on the Nantucket Hunting Association, visit its Web site: ackhunt.org.