Rough Landing is a five-part series on the debate over basing F-35 fighter jets in Burlington. Explore the full project.
South Burlington’s Chamberlin neighborhood sits just west of the Burlington International Airport and the Vermont Air National Guard base.
In the fall of 2019, the Air Force plans to station 18 F-35 fighter jets at the base. Residents are concerned about how the jets will affect their neighborhood, which has already seen decades of changes related to the airport’s expansion. The decision to move forward with the project set off years of intense public debate.
In this podcast, hear from people who have been a part of that debate: members of organized campaigns opposing the F-35, neighbors concerned about future home buyouts, and vocal supporters of the basing. Many have differing views on the planes — but all expect that within a few years, the airport neighborhood will look very different from today.
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Steve Marriott: I’m more upset about losing the neighborhood than I am about the noise. It’s bothersome to me, but to make a bigger part of this neighborhood uninhabitable would be a shame.
When we moved here, people were building additions onto their houses — you know, more bedrooms for more kids and that kind of stuff. So it’s gone from growing to, now, shriveling.
That’s Steve and Loretta Marriott. They live in South Burlington’s Chamberlin neighborhood, just west of the Burlington International Airport and the Vermont Air National Guard Base.
In the fall of 2019, the Air Force plans to station 18 F-35 fighter jets at the base. The military’s own environmental impact data has residents concerned about how the jets will affect their neighborhood — a neighborhood that’s already seen decades of changes.
The decision to move forward with the project set off years of intense public debate. Today, you’ll hear from people who have been a part of that debate. Some of them are members of organized campaigns opposing the F-35. Some of them are not. Some have been vocal supporters of the basing. But all of them expect that within a few years, the airport neighborhood will look very different from today.
Steve Marriott: Loretta was born at Mary Fletcher Hospital in Burlington. When she was a kid, growing up in South Burlington, her mother used to go and do picnics at the far end of the the airport runway before it was expanded. So that’s the kind of thing — you know, when you go have a picnic and look at Mount Mansfield and nobody gives you any trouble. And we’ve lived here on Mills Avenue since 1976.
Loretta Marriott: It was going to be a starter house, but we like it so much, we’ve just lived here. We’ve put an addition on, and we’re here for the long haul.
Carmine Sargent: My name is Carmine Sargent, and I’ve lived here since 1972. So for 45 years, almost 46. It’s my home.
Carmine lives on Elizabeth Street, about 1,000 feet from the airport.
And we moved here because my oldest child has spina bifida. She uses a wheelchair. And I had taught in the school, so I knew that the schools were all accessible. Plus, it’s flat. Where can you find an absolutely flat neighborhood where you can be outdoors in a wheelchair? It was just a little quiet neighborhood.
There were a lot of children. All the kids walked to school, everybody played with each other. It was just a nice place. It was all, like, starter homes for new families. In fact, for us, it was supposed to be a starter home but I divorced in 79 to 81. So it’s my finishing house.
Dave Deslauriers: I’ve been here — myself and my family — we’ve been here since the mid-’80s. I think we moved here like ‘86.
This is Dave Deslauriers. Neighbors call Dave “The King of Delaware Street” — mainly because Dave is now the only person on Delaware Street. His house looks out on what’s now the airport parking garage.
Deslauriers: And my wife and I moved here from St. Albans because we just had our first son, and I was working at IBM, and it was like, I need to get closer to work. We need to be where there’s a good school system. South Burlington at the time had an excellent, I mean, top rated school system.
It was just a phenomenal environment. The boys just — it’s just a totally enriching place for them to grow up. You know, be able to walk to school, walk to the store. It used to be called Geno’s. Now, it’s the airport store.
Whatever you want to call it, it was just phenomenal. Safe. They could play, they’d just go to the airport all the time and, you know, play at the airport because it was just a great place to hang out. You know, the escalator and the parking lot and the picnic tables.
The street was just loaded. There was one, two, three, four — five of us, all veterans. Air Force, Army and Navy. You had a whole mix of people here. You had working class. You had educators. You had military, Army Guard, or whatever. You had prominent people that were mechanics, they worked at various companies. You had whole the whole social economic range of people.
Sargent: This is the oldest part of South Burlington. So it sort of had become the forgotten part. We are the people that have lower incomes. It’s more of a working class area. And it’s the part that nobody really was doing anything about.
I think the military did have a presence here at that time, but it wasn’t anything like it is now. There’s nothing like it is now. It was the Air Guard and it was the “weekend warriors” more. It wasn’t like a big facility that harbored all of these aggressive planes and stuff.
Plus, the airport itself was much smaller. There might be like four or five flights in and out of here a day.
Ray Gonda: I moved there because I got married. My wife happened to own a house; I married her and moved in.
This is Ray Gonda. Ray lived on Berkeley Street near the airport for 15 years. He’s moved to another part of South Burlington but still owns his old house.
Gonda: I live in what is called the “65 decibel day night average zone,” and that is a zone that the Federal Aviation Authority and the Air Force consider not fit for residential use. Anything from 65 higher, they consider it not fit for residential use.
During the early part of my living there, the jets were very, very noisy. I live about — if I was just to look out past the Chamberlin School, though I couldn’t see it, I could see when jets rose above the level of the houses — it appeared to me that the jets would actually lift off the field and go into a steep climb just about the middle of the airfield. And when they went into that steep climb, you could just see this big long fire tail off the back of the plane. And that was a really terrible noise.
We had a big picture window in the house, and I would sit with my back to that picture window at my desk and computer. And those windows would begin to rattle whenever those jets start taking off — so badly that I would get out of my chair and get away from the windows because I was afraid they’re going to shatter. What chance there was of shattering, I don’t know. But I wasn’t about to take that chance.
Rosanne Greco: When I first came here, you know, I did — flying in, the first thing that struck me when I got off the aircraft, and my real estate agent was taking me around to look at the houses, was how adorable it was. You come out of the airport and there’s little houses there! I’m used to, you go out and you see the storage units and the cargo containers and the strip malls. And here? They’re houses.
This is Roseanne Greco. Roseanne served in the Air Force for about 30 years and moved to South Burlington after she retired. She went on to chair the South Burlington City Council and became one of the leading voices in the opposition to the F-35.
Greco: I know my first experience with the Vermont Air Guard was, we were in this house and we heard this noise, which turned out to be an F-16. And my husband ran outside. We thought something was wrong. Now, I’ve got to tell you, I’ve lived on military bases. All right? But I’ve also lived in the civilian population too. And I’d never heard a noise like that. I’ve lived in Washington, D.C., and you don’t hear fighter jets flying overhead.
When I saw that, I thought, “Oh my gosh, are we under attack again?” You know, that was my first thought. And then we learned that, you know, the Green Mountain Boys were over there, and then they fly periodically — oh, okay.
Anna Johnston: In 2001, when I heard the F-16s, I thought, oh that’s good. You know, they’re going to go get whoever — you know, when the [9/11] attacks happened.
When did it start to really bother me? Well, when I was home for the summer, sitting outside, and the jets would come in. You’d have to stop your conversation.
This is Anna Johnston. Anna is 83. She lives a few doors down from Steve and Loretta Marriott.
Johnston: You’d hear the planes going, you know, windows would rattle a little bit or something, you know, depending on what’s up there. Since the F-16s, it’s gotten worse. The noise has gotten worse, especially when they have their maneuvers.
How does that sound different?
Johnston: It’s the difference between, let’s say, an egg beater and putting a power drill up to your ear. You know what I mean? It’s like you just stop what you’re doing. And even with headphones, if you’re walking, if you’re listening to music, you don’t hear the music because it’s interrupted by the other.
Gonda: If I was on a phone or talking to anybody, that would have to cease until all those jets had taken off. And afterwards, at least half the time after those jets took off — we had a row of pictures on the wall hanging on picture hangers, and I would have to go and straighten out about half of those pictures. They would wobble, and the wall would would vibrate, and the pictures would just get out of order, get tilted, and I’d have to go put them back. It wasn’t a big deal. But it was still irritating.
Sargent: It would it would interrupt our daily life, mostly with the noise and exhaust fumes from the planes. There are certain weather conditions where there’s an inversion in the air, and the exhaust from these planes just settles. It’s like a cloud of kerosene hanging over.
It’s mostly the military planes that put out spew out that much stuff. It’s really, like, usually in the morning, when Guard planes are taking off. Let’s say they’re going out at between eight and nine or something. The air’s a little heavy in the morning anyway. It’s usually when it’s warmer, you go out the door and you come back in because it’s smells like burning kerosene. There’s nothing you can do about it except come inside.
Matthew Ennis: I’d been in Lincoln a long time, up in the mountains, and I just wanted to be more urban again.
Winooski is a really interesting city. It’s the most diverse city in Vermont. I mean, there’s so many refugees here from all over the world, a lot of young people moving in here. Pretty good music scene going on here.
Noise maps for the F-35 extend the 65 decibel zone into Winooski, one of the fastest growing cities in Vermont. Matthew Ennis lives in an apartment there.
The passenger flight path is a little south of me — like five, six, seven houses south of me — so it doesn’t go right over me. People that are right underneath the passenger jet flight path, it’s a little more difficult.
The F-16s are unpredictable. So often they are south of me, basically where the other jets are, but sometimes they’re right over the house. They can just do different maneuvers sometimes. So the F-16s don’t have an exact flight path.
When they’re really loud, when the afterburners are allowed, I mean, you really can’t hear very well. If you’re on the phone with someone, you’ve got to just pause.
What the politicians were saying over and over: it’s only six minutes a day. And that isn’t true. There are days when they can be up and down three times. That can be like in the morning, just after like, 1:00 or 1:30 in the afternoon. And sometimes they’ll do evening stuff. So it can be many times a day. There can be times when nothing’s happening for a bunch of weeks, like they were gone for a while, so there wasn’t anything going on. But generally it’s happening twice a day.
And usually you hear three to five jets in a row. So you hear one, you’re gonna hear at least another couple. Sometimes it’s four or five.
Steve Marriott: The F-4s were pretty loud.
Loretta Marriott: The F-4s were loud when we lived in Winooski under the flight path. But when we got here—
Steve Marriott: They weren’t as loud.
Loretta Marriott: We were very relieved that it was really quite quiet. Yeah, because we weren’t under the flight path. The airport was kind of perpendicular to us and there was a lot of buildings between us and the airport. So it was pretty quiet. We were like, oh, this is so much nicer here.
Steve Marriott: Yeah. And then the F-16s came in.
Carmine Sargent: F-16s, when they revamped them and put the put external fuel tanks on them, they got much louder and much smellier, because they’re using a lot more fuel to take off because they’re a lot heavier.
Steve Marriott: If you listen to if a couple planes take off and one takes off without afterburners, and then one takes off with the afterburners, it’s the difference between standing there looking like, “Oh yeah, that’s cool. A jet is taking off, neat.” And then with the afterburners, it throws out flames about half the length of the airplane. And the noise is so intense, it shakes your chest.
If you’re standing out there and you watch them take off, the one without afterburners is: “There’s an airplane. Big deal.” With the afterburners, there’s flame, there’s noise, it’s just—on a certain level, it’s exciting and interesting and, you know, would make people feel patriotic. Some people. But after quite a few of them, you say, “Oh, they’re using the afterburners again.”
Anna Johnston: I hear the airplanes now. Like this morning, I heard them. That was just the commercial stuff. But that’s a muffled noise. That’s okay. But that other is a jarring noise that, you know, once it hits your system — like if you sit out here in the summertime and you want to relax, my son said, “You tell him when I’m lying in your pool, trying to relax and I hear that sound, you can’t.”
It’s unnerving. It’s not a soothing sound. And it’s it’s almost un-American to say that you don’t like that sound, because they say it’s the sound of freedom. I think silence is the sound of freedom.
Rosanne Greco: I’ve learned as I’ve gotten involved with the F-35 — I mean, I lived on military bases. I lived, when I was in Thailand, with the F-4. So I lived with that noise a lot. And we heard, you know, the planes taking off there. So I’ve gotten used to the noise. I even enjoy it. I mean, I just got sort of a thrill with that loud noise, so it never bothered me personally. In fact, we still run out and just listen.
Dave Deslauriers: To hear any aircraft taking off and landing is enjoyable to me. When I served in the United States Navy in the early ‘70s, I was there in Jacksonville, Florida, when they deployed the first squadron of F-14 Tomcats. That was the plane you saw in the movie Top Gun. Let me tell you, every time they took off, I’m like, “Wow. God, that’s great.”
And then when our ship would come up to Norfolk, Virginia, we’d see all the plane types: the tankers, the bombers, the B-52s, the F-14, F-16, you know, the T-3s, I mean training planes. God, it was great. It was like the greatest air show in the world every day. Every day! I just loved it.
Yeah, you wear hearing protection. So if you got your earmuffs on, my Mickey Mouse ears, you’re good to go. So if you’re going to sit there like they did in the movie Top Gun, in that scene where Tom Cruise is on his motorcycle, and he’s right there by the runway? I used to do that. I would sit right by the runway and watch those guys rip off, you know, and just head out over the ocean. And they’re going like a bat. That is a cool sound! But you have to have hearing protection.
Jeff Deslauriers: The decibel thing? Yeah, I can’t tell how I’m getting affected by decibels or gamma rays from the sun, whatever. But what I can tell is when you have F-16s take off, what we learned to do was stop talking to each other for a minute or two. Two to five planes would take off and then it was over. Big whoop. Move on with your life. It wasn’t a big deal.
This is Jeff Deslauriers, one of Dave’s sons.
Jeff Deslauriers: For some people that’s really bothersome. But for those of us who grew up next to this, we grew up next to this.
Fast-forward to 2010. I’m in Afghanistan when we were done with the mission and getting out of the country. It was at Bagram Airfield, and the tent that we got put in for this transit phase was right next to the airfield. So the military aircraft are screaming off, and I go into combat missions. And I’m laying there on my cot and the other guys are: “Ah, so loud over here!” I’m just sitting like: “Guys, this is great. I feel right at home. This is comfortable.” Like, I’m happy. Because of that jet noise.
Steve Marriott: There’s two problems here, and they get mixed up together. There’s the F-35, which looks like it’s coming in the end of 2019. And that’s for the Air Guard.
But there’s also the FAA buying of houses, and that’s through the airport and the FAA. And it doesn’t really have anything to do with the military besides the fact that their fighter jets have increased the noise. And the F-35 is going to increase it substantially. And then the line for the approval of dealing with noise from the FAA and the airport will spread further and further into the neighborhood.
Dave Deslauriers: The change started in ‘88, ‘89, when they started their super secret non-disclosed buyouts. If people started to volunteer to start negotiations with the previous leadership, they had to sign a super secret document that said you couldn’t talk to your neighbors. So if you were in discussion with the airport, you couldn’t say anything.
And then all of a sudden we started seeing, like, one house would would just disappear, be gone. And then another one would disappear. They took them down and they left them empty for a few years. So you didn’t know that there wasn’t people there anymore. They started to disperse. And then once it got in the mid 90s, it started to kick up. And unless you volunteered and signed that document, you weren’t part of it.
I had originally gone over there in the early years and picked up the document. So I had it, and I read it. I’m like, “Nah, I’m not buying into this thing.” We were still raising our children. And they’re going through schools.
Steve Marriott: The little store over there that’s the airport deli now: When we moved here it was Geno’s, a real neighborhood store. And you know, you could go down to Geno’s and sit around. The guy that lived across the street, you know, was probably the first time I ever heard of buyouts. And those houses across from Geno’s were the first houses to go. Basically, their backyard was where the parking garages are now.
Loretta Marriott: Our babysitters lived there. One of our best ever babysitters.
Jeff Deslauriers: My earliest memories of the airport were before the parking garage was built. You got the red brick facade of the building. The current observation tower was the old control tower and I feel like for me, things started to become more negative right around the time of the parking garage going up.
When was that?
Jeff Deslauriers: 1997, ‘98. It’s right around there. So that, you know, there’s now a physical barrier separating the neighborhood from the airport. It’s just symbolic that way.
Loretta Marriott: One of the things I recall is, people were uncertain. You know, what’s going to happen next? When is the airport going to contact us? Is the airport gonna contact us?
Steve Marriott: They weren’t very open about it.
Loretta Marriott: No, no, not at all. It was unpredictable. It provoked a lot of anxiety. Because, you know, we didn’t know what was going to happen next.
Carmine Sargent: There’s a mentality, I think, that people are afraid to speak up, go against authority. I think it’s just the way this has been done, because it was all the secrecy around it at first. You know, there’s almost like a cloud hanging over it. Like people are afraid.
It’s almost like they’re encroaching on you. And I love what they always say: “You don’t have to agree to this.” But if somebody comes up and buys this, if the airport buys this house, that house, and you’re that one left in an island, are you going to really stay there?
Dave Deslauriers: So then by the mid 2000s, 2005, it started to really crank up. Some people had a really good experience and other people had a frustrating experience. It varied. Some people really didn’t want to leave, but they felt compelled because their neighbors were leaving.
Carmine Sargent: And they incentivize buying these houses by: They give you the fair market value of your property, plus a certain percentage above. They pay all the moving expenses, so you don’t have any relocation expenses. They even pay the utility expenses of moving.
Really? So where are you going to get that kind of a deal? I mean, you’re probably getting 50 to 100,000 more than you’d get by selling your house on your own. Plus, you don’t have relocation fees. So what would you do? I’d probably go.
Jeff Deslauriers: They created an air of imminent doom within the community. It especially affected the elderly population. They scared them.
Some people wanted to get out for different reasons. Or there was this pressure, this intimidation, and it changed their thought process to making a poor choice. And there have been—like, neighbors have come back over the years saying, “We made a mistake. We never should have done that.” Like, apologizing, basically, to us that—”I’m sorry I let the pressure get to me.” Because now those buildings are gone.
Carmine Sargent: As a single woman raising two daughters here, this is my main asset. This house in this lot, and being a part of this community. And I felt like it was being taken away from us by people that could give a shit, really. They didn’t care. What do they care?
Anna Johnston: You take the house away, you’re taking the people away. You’re taking all of that away. So it’s not a connection, you know. You used to walk by and people would be sitting on the porch. You wave, you talk, or something. That’s gone. On Airport Street, you don’t see that anymore. You don’t see it on Dumont, you go down around there. I mean, they keep the property clean and stuff, and there’s something to be said for free spaces. But it’s just not the same thing.
Carmine Sargent: And as soon as you take homes down, the noise goes further. They’re sound barriers. So you take down a lot of houses, that noise is just going to go to the next row if houses, and they’re going to be the new sound barrier.
And then it sort of scars the neighborhood. Because now the neighborhood has a reputation for being a noise zone, so people want to leave.
Matthew Ennis: And so what’s going to happen when the F-35 comes is going to be more houses in a higher noise zone. And according to research that we know, and stuff that the Air Force has even said, there’s going to be more houses that are unsuitable for residential use because they’re in more of a noise zone.
Rosanne Greco: It says in every scenario, the F-35 is louder than the F-16. In every possible scenario. They had a bunch of options, the scenarios, and then it had the charts and you could see the decibel level. So I read all that stuff. And in every place I just looked at decibel levels, and it was over four times louder. Just looking at the numbers.
Jeff Deslauriers: I don’t think the military is involved in wanting us to not be here. The threat that’s from that—which is why when the F-35 debates were going on, I was on the no side to the F-35—is purely because of whatever level of noise that the plane systems add to that sound contour projection. So that’s why I’m obligated to be against anything that’s going to increase that 65db line.
Ernie Pomerleau: It’s an airport. There are jets at airports, folks. It’s not the quietest place in the world.
This is Ernie Pomerleau. Ernie runs Pomerleau Real Estate. He also served on the Airport Planning Commission and chaired the Greater Burlington Industrial Corporation, or GBIC, which promotes economic development in Chittenden County.
Ernie Pomerleau: The issue around the airport with housing was FAA. Voluntary buyout. People going, “Hey, I can get my money. Time to go.” That happens.
You know, we had a big discussion around the mall. I voted yes: $250 million in downtown Burlington. I’m in. Done. But there were opposition to that. There’s always opposition. That’s natural. It’s normal. You can’t get people to agree if it’s sunny or rainy out.
Jeff Deslauriers: Okay. The feds decided it’s not safe to live in in 65 decibels for humans, long term. Yeah, okay. Things are based on health studies, and that’s real science. So that gave them access to these federal FAA funds to do the home buyout project, which is a voluntary program.
But look at the reality of where have they bought the homes. It has only occurred in the strip of land where they want to do their expansion projects for the airport. They want a hotel on their own property. They want restaurants. There was an idea for a spa over there. It does not meet the reality of the needs of this area. And at the same time, you’ve destroyed a great neighborhood. It’s not totally dead. But you look at the manor lands out here, and it’s been pretty well gutted.
Matthew Ennis: You know, they want to develop around the airport. They want to do commercial development there. But basically, they get federal money to buy it out. And then it belongs to Burlington. Burlington owns the airport, even though it’s in South Burlington. So that, to me, is a total travesty.
We need the housing stock in Chittenden County and they’ve destroyed over 200 homes already.
Ray Gonda: You know, to put it simply, they were tearing down affordable housing. And this area has a huge shortage of affordable housing. This was one of the more expensive, if not the most expensive place to live in the state.
Ernie Pomerleau: Chittenden County has the strongest economy in Vermont, right? One of the reasons is, we’ve got an airport. The airport is our number one, two, and three economic stimulator. I’m born here, I’m a business person here, my office is here. Anything I can do to strengthen the economic viability of Burlington, Vermont, I’m in. Right? That’s just me. I support the mall. I support everything that goes on, I bang the drums, right?
They’re making the airport a commercial district. And then, “Oh, the F-35s and the F-16s are taking all the houses.” No, FAA did that. Not the military—the FAA did that.
I want to promote the airport. I want more traffic. I want to beat Plattsburgh. I want us to have more flights, more transportation.
Frank Cioffi: We say about our area, we punch way above our weight class. Having the university that we have here, with the med school that we have, to having the hospital and the airport.
Frank Cioffi runs GBIC today. He and Ernie have both been vocal supporters of the F-35.
Frank Cioffi: You know, for areas of our population size to have an airport like we have here is not typical. So with a metropolitan region the size of our region, it’s a significant asset.
The first job in economic development is to hold on to what you have. So you got to retain the best employers, the best economic contributors, and that’s called retention. Holding on to the best employers is job number one.
Help me connect the dots, how does basing the F-35 here—how is that holding onto what we have?
Frank Cioffi: It’s 1,100 jobs. About 400 are full time. And you can’t create—you know, it took dealer.com 16, 17 years to grow 1,100 jobs.
I’m a Vermonter. Born here. And I can remember when Plattsburgh Air Force Base left across the lake. They still haven’t recovered, and that was almost 40 years ago.
Rosanne Greco: The Guard was already talking, you know, were basically putting the message out that, “Boy, if we don’t get the F-35 here, then we’re out of business. We’re not going to get another mission. You know, the F-16 is old”—and it is, you know—”and once that goes out of service, we’re gonna fold up shop and go home.”
What would happen if they didn’t get this plane and the F-16s do age out of service?
Rosanne Greco: What the Air Force told us they would do. They said the Vermont Air National Guard will always have a flying mission. If they don’t get the F-35—what they say in the court documents—they get any number of aircraft. They could get the retrofitted, the upgraded F-16. They could get that. They could get another aircraft to fly there. Any number of options that the Vermont Air National Guard could fly if they didn’t get the F-35. It’s not this or nothing. It’s this, or this, or this or this. There are lots of missions.
Frank Cioffi: General Cray got up and spoke for the Vermont Air National Guard, and with his affiliation with the United States Air Force, and basically said there is no other mission.
Maj. Gen. Steven Cray [Adjutant General of the Vermont National Guard]: We have pilots and maintenance personnel training and conducting F-35 operations all around the United States. And all that preparation is for the eventual arrival the F-35 here in Vermont. Our airmen are 100% committed and focused on this mission change.
Frank Cioffi: So we’re not a drone unit. We’re not a cargo unit. We’re not an evacuation team or special forces or whatever else. We’re an Air Guard unit. So the facilities that they have, the runways that we have, the personnel, the equipment that we have, is all designed to be a fighter wing. You don’t change what you’re doing like that.
Ernie Pomerleau: There’s only one mission. And they’re fighter pilots. They’ve had F-16s for half of forever, and a bunch of other jets before that.
They are under construction for $100 million of new construction at the Burlington airport to bring in the F-35. That is gigantic. The multiple effect of what they bring to the airport as support, what they bring to the community, having the guard here, is like a no brainer.
And when the F-35 was being deployed, it was whether it was going to Burlington or to Ohio or South Carolina. If I’m going to have a multi, multi, multi-million dollar investment going to Ohio or to South Carolina or Burlington, Vermont—and they have been there since 1946—and we can get it to Burlington, Vermont, I will push and everything in my power to get it to Burlington, Vermont.
Dave Deslauriers: For me, I support my military. I’m ex-military. But I’d rather support my military in a different location. It would be more beneficial for the overall citizenship of this area to have it in a different place. But it’s not. So I support them. You know, I’ve known many, many people, many colonels. I’m not going to take away their livelihood.
Jeff Deslauriers: And there’s some people who say, well, the airport was here before the neighborhood. Yeah, it was like the ‘20s or the ‘30s. Burlington convinced these farmers to lease the land, and they started the airport. So the neighborhood here isn’t until late ‘40s, early ‘50s when it’s actually built.
But that doesn’t matter. What do we have now? We’ve got this neighborhood. We have this airport. We have this relationship. That’s what we move forward with. We don’t do the Israel-Palestine thing and say, “Oh, I was here first.” No, we look at, what do we have now? And how are lives being affected?
Loretta Marriott: We didn’t want to be active in it. It sort of came and, you know, engulfed us.
I had written a letter to—of course, I’ve written lots and lots of letters—and [U.S. Rep.] Peter Welch send me back a letter on this card. June 13, 2013.
“Dear Loretta, I certainly appreciate your advocacy for your beautiful neighborhood. And I hope the Air Guard could mitigate the noise problem. Yes, the F-35 are a burden on the neighborhood. But the jobs and future of the airport are relevant too. Sincerely, Peter.”
What did you think when you got that?
I thought: so you just pat us on the back and say, “Don’t worry about it. It’ll be all fine.” And that’s when I thought, you know, I know it’s not going to be all fine. And so that was in 2013. And you know, a whole lot of houses have come down since then. That’s not fine. The school has got a lot fewer children. And that’s not fine.
Steve Marriott: We’ve known everybody in all these houses since we basically moved here.
Loretta Marriott: These are valuable relationships to us. We do stuff for each other.
Steve Marriott: We’ve been here 42 years. We have keys to our neighbor’s house, they have keys to our house. It’s that kind of thing.
Loretta Marriott: You know, they’re long-term relationships. You don’t just get that kind of relationship instantly when you move somewhere else.
Dave Deslauriers: One of my neighbors here on Delaware Street decided to leave. I think that was 2008, 2009. I mean, I knew they were in discussions. But it was like—it was sad. It was very sad for me.
I want to stay in my house as long as I can. If I get to the point where I can’t stay in my house due to age or health—because here it’s convenient for me. Near all my doctors, all the services. I’m a veteran. I’m close to the VA. So I’m really not at that point yet.
Psychologically for me, this is my home. This is my place for my children come back to. This is my place for my grandchildren to come to. It’s still the home that they know.
A lot of people don’t get this. They have this mixed reaction. It’s like, why do people get so attached to their homes? Well, if you grow up in a home, and you’ve been there for 30, 40, 50, 80 years, you get a little attached to your home. That’s your home. You raised your children there, made improvements there. You have a lot of memories there. It’s important. That’s how our memories are built.
Anna Johnston: My prediction is probably that these houses will be gone. That this will be non-existent. That, you know, the hotel will go up—and I think it should, you know, that would be a good buffer for the noise. But I don’t see it being a community anymore. I just don’t. I think this will all be gone.
Matthew Ennis: I mean, if we don’t win this fight, and the jet is coming in the fall of 2019, and I have to sign another lease in June of 2019, I might not stay in Winooski. Because it’s going to be pretty intense here if they’re coming. If I know what’s gonna come, I might choose to get out of here. I don’t want to live with this thing going over me.
But I haven’t made that decision yet. And I’m still hoping that it’s not coming.
Carmine Sargent: Yeah, I’m not I’m not going anywhere. Am I going to go? I mean, I’m old. I’m 74. I’ve lived here for 45 years. I live here with a daughter who’s disabled, who has an established life. I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to get old here and probably die here.
It’s just a crapshoot. Am I going to live here long enough for them to spoil the quality of my life? I don’t know.
Additional reporting by Jasper Craven. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. [/showhide]
