ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, February 21, 1996 TAG: 9602210021
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W.VA.
SOURCE: MEGAN SCHNABEL STAFF WRITER
FOLKS ARE LINING UP to see this symbol of Cold War caution: the once top-secret bunker built to shelter top government officials at the posh Greenbrier resort.
The tour group paused in front of an equipment storage room, a bedroom-sized space with bare white walls and empty shelves.
"There's nothing in there, but please feel free to look," said tour guide Carolyn O'Neil, as cameras flashed around her. "We have nothing to hide."
Maybe not anymore. But such openness is still something of a novelty around these parts, where, for the last 30 years, the federal government had maintained a secret underground bomb shelter big enough to house the entire U.S. Congress. Here, right underneath the west wing of the five-star Greenbrier resort.
The 112,000-square-foot, bomb-proof bunker was built in the late 1950s, at the height of the Cold War. It included spartan sleeping, eating and working quarters as well as sophisticated decontamination and communications systems.
Through the early 1990s, the still-secret bunker was kept in a constant state of readiness by a small staff of workers who posed as hotel TV repairmen. But in 1992, a Washington Post reporter broke the story of the secret bunker. The bunker was opened to the media last November, and "Dateline," an NBC news magazine show, took viewers on a television tour of the facility.
And just this month, the bunker was opened for public tours. The tours have averaged 125 people a day; last weekend, more than 400 visitors showed up for the 11/2-hour tours.
After more than three decades of secrecy and denials, the new emphasis on openness has been hard for some to accept.
Fritz Bugas, a former military intelligence officer, was the bunker's chief operator for 20 years. He was responsible for keeping the bunker in operating order, and for keeping it a secret.
Sunday afternoon, he was shepherding tourists onto the buses that would take them to the bunker entrance.
"Mentally, I've adjusted," said Bugas. "It hasn't really been an easy thing to do. You just have to make up your mind and say what's come and gone is over. It's no longer classified."
Lynne Bostic, manager of public relations for The Greenbrier, watched Bugas give an interview to a Charleston television reporter.
"It was very difficult for Fritz to talk about it at first," she said. "The first people we took through were employees of the hotel. People would ask him questions and you could just see the emotion in his face."
Most people who visit the bunker live within an hour or two of White Sulphur Springs. Many of them say they always knew The Greenbrier was part of a secret federal project, although they didn't know quite what that project was.
"In the Greenbrier Valley, there was sort of an understanding that something was there," Bugas said. "But people didn't talk about it. They were good at keeping a secret."
Locals watched the excavation, wondered at the loads of dirt that were hauled away, speculated about the tons of concrete that were poured.
"We knew that building was going on," O'Neil said. "But it was just instinct. The only thing we knew for sure was that we wouldn't be let in."
Linda McDonald of Wayside, W.Va., a town 30 minutes from White Sulphur Springs, toured the bunker with her 13-year-old son, Travis.
"Everybody talks about it around here," she said. "I was raised here. I had just heard bits and pieces. We all knew it was here, we just didn't know where it was located."
They also didn't know which of their friends or neighbors - or family members - were part of the project.
To his family, Dr. Tom Dotson was just a doctor of internal medicine at The Greenbrier's clinic. But he was also one of the doctors who participated in bunker drills, and who would have been locked into the bunker with the members of Congress in the event of a nuclear war.
"In case of a war, all he told us was that he may never come home," said his daughter, Laura Sheppard, who now lives in nearby Lewisburg. She toured the bunker for the first time last Sunday.
"I didn't even know it until `Dateline' exposed it," she said, and shook her head. "We grew up here and we never knew anything about it."
Her high school prom, in fact, was held in one of The Greenbrier's posh ballrooms, just upstairs from the no-frills bunker.
For 35 years, Paul Campbell worked in the three-story underground power plant that housed the bunker's generators and water heater. To his friends, he was just a hotel worker.
"I've known Paul all my life," O'Neil said. "I've taught his children. You can imagine my surprise when I found out he was an integral part of this."
Now Campbell spends his days with the tourists. He swings wide the 30-ton outer door, waits while the visitors file into the once-secret hallway, then lets it slam shut with a reverberating boom.
"It's hard sometimes," he said, watching as camcorders captured it all on film.
Tours begin at the train station across from The Greenbrier's main entrance at 2:30 p.m. each Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday through March 14. Admission is $10.
LENGTH: Long : 106 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: STEPHANIE KLEIN-DAVIS/Staff. 1. Paul Campbell (above), aby CNBmechanic at the bomb shelter for 35 years, opens the 30-ton door for
tourists to pass into the hallway of the bunker. 2. Some people who
lived near The Greenbrier (below) say they suspected the resort was
part of a secret federal project. 3. Fritz Bugas (far left) was
responsible for keeping the bunker in operating order, and for
keeping it a secret. 4. The shelter is open to the public now,
including the former broadcasting-communications room (left).
color.