It was built on 350 acres in the gently sloping hills of Fullerton. With its
broad lawns and stands of towering trees, the sprawling Hughes Aircraft
aerospace complex looks more like a college campus than an industrial outpost of
the Cold War.
But they built air defense systems there. And anti-submarine systems. And
battlefield radar.
During its 37-year history, the Hughes Fullerton operation earned a
reputation as the world's preeminent supplier of air defense systems and as one
of the leading makers of surface and anti-submarine systems for the Navy.
But the boom times ended long before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The company's announcement Monday that it will in effect shut down its
massive facility over the next two years and that most of its 6,800 employees
will be either transferred or laid off brings Hughes' long and distinguished
time in Fullerton to a close.
The glory years have turned to anxious moments for current workers and a time
of reflection for former employees who remember working at Hughes when Orange
County aerospace was king.
"It was fantastic," says Ray Turner of La Habra, 65, who retired from Hughes
last year after 24 years, adding, "It's a shame it had to end like this."
The eventual closing of the Hughes plant, for nearly four decades the city's
largest employer, will end a significant chapter in the history of Fullerton,
where the company has played a key role not only in the city's economy but in
the community at large.
"Hughes is Fullerton, and Fullerton is Hughes," Mayor A.B. (Buck) Catlin has
said more than once.
"Howard saw the need for acquiring land and he saw opportunity," Catlin says,
referring to the company's legendary founder, Howard Hughes. "He made a good
land deal."
Michael Welds, a personnel manager for Hughes Aircraft from 1954 to his
retirement in 1978, says: "They claimed Howard Hughes never put his feet in
Fullerton. But he flew over it. And he said, 'Well, it's not a bad spot there.'
"
The story of Hughes Aircraft in Fullerton is part of the larger one played
out by the aerospace industry as it shaped Orange County in the post-World War
II years.
Los Angeles-based Hughes Aircraft decided to move to Fullerton because of its
success in the early 1950s with building avionics packages for Air Force
fighters--essentially airborne radar, cockpit computers and displays and
radar-guided missiles.
Hughes chose Fullerton primarily because it offered open land that would
allow the company to test its outdoor radar equipment without interfering with
neighbors' TVs and other electronic devices. (All testing is now done
indoors.)
Nicholas Begovich, 72, remembers that hot June day in 1957 when he and about
200 other Hughes workers from throughout Southern California opened the doors of
the company's newest division: a pair of small stucco buildings next to
Fullerton Airport.
"We had the whole world to show our wares," says Begovich.
Within two years, Hughes' Fullerton operations had moved to state-of-the art
labs and offices perched at the top of the area known as Sunny Hills, and it was
indeed on the world stage. The division soon won a $400-million contract--then
the largest in Hughes Aircraft's history--to develop NATO's air defense system
for Europe.
The good times for Hughes workers began to sour in the 1970s. With major
defense cuts in 1970, the aerospace industry experienced a dramatic downturn and
the Hughes' Fullerton plant was hit as hard as anyone--3,000 of its 8,000
employees were laid off.
But by the late 1970s, the plant landed a series of international air defense
contracts, which offset its dismal opportunities in the United States. Defense
spending remained relatively low until the 1980s buildup begun during the Reagan
Administration, and by 1986, Hughes' employee roster had swollen to a record
14,500. But shortly thereafter, the company began to cut back.
