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Join the club

The Air Force club used to be the place on base — every base.

There were O-clubs for officers, and E-clubs for enlisted.

And everybody belonged, at least everybody who wanted a promotion. You had to. It was an unwritten rule.

There was conversation over drinks in the lounge, lingerie parties in the back bar, “ladies nights” for co-eds from local colleges. Families gathered for important occasions and Sunday brunch.

Then, society changed. The Air Force changed. And now clubs, except those overseas that give airmen an American haven in a foreign land, are merging or even closing their doors.

Just five years ago, the service had 118 clubs. Today, according to Air Force Services, the number is 99, of which 70 are collocated — officers and enlisted airmen tipping their glasses in the same building.

Membership is dropping by 10,500 a year. In 2002, there were 267,000 club members; today, there are just 193,000 — and only 64,000 — about one in every three — are on active duty. The rest are retirees, civilians or members of the Guard or Reserve, according to Air Force Services.

There isn’t any one reason why clubs fell from favor. It was rather, a confluence of factors, members and club managers say: the Air Force’s deglamorization of alcohol, its increased focus on the family, competition from more sophisticated watering holes just outside the gates, post-9/11 security standards that made it harder for civilians to get onto the base and the much-hated club credit cards.

Whatever the reasons, now the Air Force is valiantly trying to save what retired Lt. Col. J.D. Lyles and other longtime members see as a central tenet of Air Force culture. It’s reaching out to officers and enlisted airmen with free memberships, theme nights, family activities and lower credit card rates.

The service desperately wants airmen — young and old — to do more than just grab lunch at the club. It wants airmen to become members, pay the monthly dues that range from $1 to $25 depending on rank and location, and reap benefits of club membership.

“Clubs are part of the Air Force,” said Lyles, who flew F-4s and F-16s during his 25-year career. “Airmen are really missing out on the chance to get to really know and learn from their fellow airmen.”

The exodus

Perhaps the death of the Air Force club is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The droves dropping their memberships are forcing clubs to cut back on hours, programs and special events, club managers said. That, in turn, makes the clubs less desirable and competitive with off-base venues.

“With less revenue generated, the amount of programs offered at the base is less. Typically, you see the operational hours shirking. So it affects everybody in the sense when you want to go, it has to be open,” said Fred McKenney, Air Force food and beverage division chief.

The clubs at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., not far from Las Vegas, were so underused they now close on weekends, canceling the once popular Sunday brunch. Langley Air Force Base, Va., went from members-only dinners once a month to four times a year.

Deborah Spivey remembers the days when airmen packed the lounge at Langley’s enlisted club, where she’s the catering manager. At least 300 stood elbow to elbow at the bar on Friday nights, she said. These days, 50 might show up.

The club used to host a jazz band or disc jockey to entertain those airmen one night a week and sometimes served up free shrimp and crab legs. The lack of patrons keeps the club from offering much of anything like that now.

The clubs hold more activities for families, but those events often don’t even pay for themselves.

“We did a summer splash pool party for adults and kids. No one came out to that,” said Jheri Barber, Nellis’ club manager.

“When we had the dining room open for families, we spent more money paying the bartender and staff to watch TV.”

Running up a tab

In the 1990s, the Air Force introduced a new officers club membership card that doubled as a credit card. Service officials thought the card would do three things: help young airmen build their credit scores, get the Air Force out of the business of collecting dues, and provide a new revenue stream.

The Air Force succeeded in pushing off the dues responsibility to MasterCard but failed in convincing airmen that the card would help them. Many airmen don’t want another credit card because they are afraid it will hurt, not help, their credit score, airmen and club managers said.

“For people who are thinking about buying a house, they don’t want to have the extra credit card,” said Capt. Kevin Savidge, an engineer for the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M.

More often than not, airmen list the credit card as the top reason they don’t join the club.

“When we talk to airmen about joining, they keep telling us they don’t want the credit card,” said Christine Stansbury, club food and beverage manager at Goodfellow Air Force Base, Texas.

Not all club managers see the credit card as a legitimate reason for not joining a club, though.

“I think it’s just an excuse not to join, really,” said Maj. Michael Rakoczy, commander of the 51st Force Support Squadron at Osan Air Base, South Korea.

And the Air Force has no plans of giving up the credit card.

“We continue to improve benefits and offerings and choice of cards,” McKenney, the food and beverage division chief, wrote in an e-mail.

Last year, for example, the service introduced a limited-use club proprietary card with a $500 limit, McKenney said.

Spivey and some of her counterparts said they have seen more airmen denied the credit card because of the recession.

“They try to join the club when they book an event and they get declined,” she said. “That especially hurts us because then they have their wedding reception downtown and we lose that business.”

De-glamming alcohol

The crackdown on liquor — after the 1991 Tailhook scandal that killed the careers of 14 admirals and 300 naval aviators — pre-dates the huge membership drop-off but played a role nonetheless, the managers said.

Military officials took a hard look at the drinking culture inside the ranks after the service members accosted dozens of women at that infamous conference in Las Vegas.

“The deglamorization of alcohol and restriction of smoking has taken a bite out of the business,” said Karen O’Camb, club manager at Lajes Field, Azores.

Sure, some airmen still get together on Fridays to play the popular Air Force bar game, crud. But many airmen have opted to avoid the club altogether rather than getting busted for driving under the influence after calling it a night.

There have been nights that Spivey said she has had to ask security forces not to park in front of the enlisted club so airmen would come in.

“I don’t remember the police sitting out there before,” said Spivey, who has worked at the Langley club for 20 years. “They were only there if people got into a fight and they would haul them away in that case.”

Lyles, the retired pilot, said he didn’t have to worry about the police in his heyday but understands why today’s airmen are careful.

“There are constant DUI checkpoints getting off the base. No one in their right mind is going to risk having a cocktail and then go off base,” he said.

Setting an example

Part of why more airmen don’t go to the clubs, Lyles thinks, is because their leaders don’t go anymore.

“It’s not about writing it down or making it mandatory,” he said. “It’s just about showing up. You don’t see as many members of leadership inside the clubs anymore. That hurts. Before, you’d see the general heading to the club so you’d tell your wife: ‘We’re going to the club. We’ll have a good time.’ It was important.”

Spivey said she sees far fewer chief master sergeants who belong to Langley’s enlisted club than she used to. Many who aren’t members ask to have events at Langley’s Chief’s Room inside the club and she has to remind them that the room is for members only.

“It didn’t used to be like that,” Spivey said of the senior noncommissioned officers. “All the chiefs always used to be members.”

Osan, on the other hand, has leaders who encourage airmen to come to the clubs, managers there said, and they are a reason that membership is so robust.

“I have been in places where that is not true, but we have very strong leadership here,” Rakoczy said. “They are at the clubs all the time.”

Leave the lights on

Right now, clubs have reason to hope their future isn’t as dim as they thought. After all, no more clubs are slated to close, and the Air Force is pulling out all the stops to sign up new club members, especially new airmen.

The service brings up the clubs in two education programs — “You Be You” for enlisted airmen and “Take It To The Max” for officers.

“You Be You” is presented at the end of basic military training and technical training. If they sign up, fees are waived for their first year. Then, they pay a reduced rate of $2 to $4 per month until they make staff sergeant.

“Take It To The Max” is presented to officers who attend Air and Space Basic Course. An officer who signs up gets his membership dues waived for the first six months.

A general membership drive for all airmen is called “Instant Payback.” Club dues are waived for the first three months for all new members and their credit card has a zero percent introductory interest rate for the first six months.

And the clubs themselves are working hard to keep members and add new ones, said McKenney, the food and beverage chief.

Especially popular are the programs for members such as Football Frenzy. Clubs that feature the frenzy show all NFL games and encourage members to register for prizes, including a trip to the Super Bowl.

Rakoczy, the commander at Osan, insists all the prizes and free dues don’t matter if airmen — especially the younger ones — aren’t finding what they want at the clubs.

Like many other club mangers, Rakoczy meets with airmen to find out what exactly they like to do. What he hears is play poker and sing karaoke. Now, the Osan club hosts Texas Hold’em poker tournaments and karaoke.

“This is not the same Air Force my father grew up in. What we expect from our military has changed. If clubs are going to survive, they have to change to it. We are focused on what our people want and we need to do whatever we can to give them that,” he said.