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Members of the SAC Elite Guard security forces salute Queen Elizabeth II and Gen. Bennie Davis, commander of Strategic Air Command, during the queen’s brief visit to Offutt Air Force Base on Oct. 15, 1984.
Dorene Sherman, longtime deputy protocol director with the Strategic Air Command at Offutt Air Force Base, is shown in 2014. Sherman met and escorted Queen Elizabeth II during her visit to Offutt.
Dorene Sherman poses with former SAC Commander Gen. Jack Chain near the EC-135 Looking Glass aircraft at the Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum. Sherman was deputy chief of protocol at SAC during Chain's tenure from 1986 to 1991.
Thousands of mourners lined up through the night for several kilometres in London to file past the Queen's coffin at Westminster Hall.
During the Cold War heyday of the Strategic Air Command, any number of celebrities journeyed to Offutt Air Force Base to tour the famous command bunker: Bob Hope, Rita Moreno, Bob Newhart, Tom Clancy. A few presidents and prime ministers. Senators and House members by the score.
But only one queen of England.
For some members of the SAC fraternity, the death of Queen Elizabeth II on Sept. 8, at age 96, brought back memories of the only visit of a British sovereign to Nebraska soil.
The queen spent only about 90 minutes at Offutt on Oct. 15, 1984, while her plane, a Royal Air Force VC-10, stopped to refuel en route back home to London.
But it certainly made an impression on those who saw her.
“I was right there all the time,” recalled Dorene Sherman, the longtime deputy protocol director for SAC and its post-Cold War successor, the U.S. Strategic Command. “There were people in every door, watching. They were so excited!”
The uniformed staff at Offutt felt it, too.
“Buzz is a good word. Because there was,” said Dale Rowse, 73, of Bellevue, then an Air Force captain and a briefing officer in SAC’s underground command post.
The Offutt stopover capped an unofficial visit focused on the Royal Family’s horse-racing interests. Queen Elizabeth had just spent several days visiting Henry Herbert, known as Lord Porchester, (who was the queen’s horse-racing manager and a lifelong friend) and his wife, Lady Jean Porchester, at their 5,000-acre ranch near Sheridan, Wyoming.
The airport in Sheridan had a short runway, and the queen’s plane could not take off with a full load of fuel for the flight to London. So the royal planners scheduled the refueling stop at Offutt. The queen’s press secretary, Michael Shea, insisted on a low-key visit, with no press invited or allowed.
Sherman recalls her protocol office receiving no more than a few days’ notice for the daunting task of planning for even a short royal visit.
She did have plenty of experience with distinguished visitors at Offutt. A self-described “farm girl” from Wausa, Nebraska, she had worked at the base since 1960. Much of that time she had worked directly for SAC’s four-star commander in chief.
Since 1970, she had been deputy protocol director. Her job was to ensure that such visits proceeded without a hitch.
The royal VC-10 jet arrived precisely on schedule, at 2:45 p.m. Dressed in a jade-green dress and matching hat, Queen Elizabeth descended the air stairs to the apron, where SAC Commander-in-Chief Gen. Bennie Davis and his wife, Pat, greeted her with a bouquet.
White-gloved members of the SAC Elite Guard security force saluted her. She reviewed a line of about 30 British airmen stationed at Offutt.
“The queen shook hands with all of them, telling them how proud she was of them,” Sherman said.
Just three days before the queen’s visit to Offutt, Irish Republican Army terrorists had bombed a hotel in Bristol, England, where leaders of the British Conservative party were meeting. Five people died and 30 were injured. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher narrowly escaped assassination.
As a result, Gen. Davis nixed plans for the queen’s party to wait in Offutt’s VIP waiting lounge in the base operations building.
Instead, he escorted the queen’s party to SAC’s ultra-secure headquarters for a tour and a briefing in the command center, six stories underground.
Rowse had been tabbed to brief the queen and her party about SAC command and control procedures, in the bunker’s command balcony.
“It was a briefing I had given hundreds of times,” Rowse recalled.
Still, this was the queen of England.
“I was told that, outside of the briefing, I was not to engage in any conversation,” Rowse said. “As I recall, she thanked me at the end. She was very gracious.”
Then the party went upstairs to Gen. Davis’ command suite, and on to his dining room for “high tea,” which Sherman said was prepared by two British women who worked at Offutt’s Officers Club.
Sherman, of course, knew this was a special day at Offutt. So she had alerted her daughter, Kris Yates, who had come from home with her 17-month-old son, Austin, on her hip. She stood in an alcove outside her mother’s protocol office, along with many curious SAC workers, hoping for a glimpse of the monarch.
Sure enough, Queen Elizabeth walked by — and immediately took notice of little Austin, and his big, brown eyes.
Perhaps the queen was thinking of her own grandsons at home in England, the children of Prince Charles and Princess Diana.
“Beautiful baby!” the queen remarked to Kris, with a smile.
Yates, stunned, thanked the queen, despite an admonition that one should not speak to royalty.
“She was just so warm, she wasn’t standoffish at all,” Kris said. “She was very kind and sweet. She seemed like a regular person.”
Soon after, Queen Elizabeth boarded her airplane, its fuel tanks now full, and flew on with her party to London.
Before she left, she waved goodbye and said “thanks” to Gen. Davis, Sherman and the assembled airmen.
It was the queen’s first experience with Nebraska Nice, and her last.
The royal visit left a pleasant imprint on those she encountered.
Austin Yates, now nearly 40, doesn’t remember his brief encounter with the British sovereign. But he jokes with his mother that she must have made the same remark about thousands of babies during her 73-year reign.
Kris prefers to think otherwise.
“He really was the most gorgeous baby,” she said.
Rowse thought of his own brief encounter with the queen when he heard of her death last week.
“Even though her passing was known to be imminent, it was still kind of a surprise and shock,” he said.
Sherman worked another 15 years at SAC and StratCom before retiring in 1999. She met countless VIPs in her long career at Offutt. But her encounter with Queen Elizabeth was a highlight, a story she loves to retell.
Despite the queen’s advanced age, Sherman mourned her passing.
“I thought, ‘My gosh, she was such an angel on Earth,’ ” Sherman said. “Now she’s an angel up there.”
The area now known as Offutt Air Force Base was first commissioned as Fort Crook, an Army post to house cavalry soldiers and their horses. This photo, circa 1905, shows mounted officers and infantry troops assembling on the parade ground. The officers' quarters in the background still stand today, but the closing of Offutt's stables in 2010 ended the base's equine tradition.
Painter Frank Anania places the final bolt in the SAC emblem, newly placed on the command building at Strategic Air Command headquarters. After the command was created in 1946, SAC headquarters were moved from Andrews Field, Maryland, to Offutt Air Force Base. SAC's high-flying reconnaissance planes and bombers would go on to play a global role from the onset of the Cold War through the last bomb of the Persian Gulf War.
The Strategic Air Command "nerve center" gets a new headquarters building at Offutt Air Force Base.
Even since the late 1950s, Strategic Air Command has been holding open house events at Offutt Air Force Base to display and demonstrate aircraft for civilian visitors. Each year, the open house and air show at Offutt features aerial acts or reenactments, static displays, and booths showcasing military history and capabilities.
The first SAC museum consisted of a section of abandoned runway near the north edge of Offutt Air Force Base outside of Bellevue. However, the outdoor display left the aircraft vulnerable to the elements.
A Royal Air Force bomber crashes at Offutt Air Force Base. Beginning in the late 1950s, the RAF maintained small detachment and service facility for Vulcan bomber planes at Offutt, often participating in defense exercises and demonstrations at the base until their retirement and deactivation in 1982. This plane crashed at take-off at the northwest end of the main runway and then slid across Highway 73-75. All seven passengers survived.
Just weeks after the Cuban missile crisis, President John F. Kennedy visits Offutt Air Force Base, accompanied by Gen. Thomas Power of Strategic Air Command, right.
Actor Rock Hudson receives a B-52 bomber briefing during a visit to Omaha and Offutt Air Force Base. He began filming "A Gathering of Eagles" in May of that year.
An early photograph of the Ehrling Bergquist military medical clinic in Bellevue. The clinic has served Offutt Air Force Base since 1966 and was remodeled in 2013, including a grand staircase, larger physical therapy and mental health areas, and a more private mammography waiting area.
The world's largest aircraft at that time, the C5 Galaxy was displayed as part of the open house for civilian visitors at Offutt Air Force Base.
A conference room in the SAC underground command post at Offutt Air Force Base. Strategic Air Command would be formally disestablished in 1992, but Offutt would remain the headquarters for the new United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM).
The Strategic Air Command Memorial Chapel holds a Sunday morning service as a reminder of those who have given their service and those who have died during the Command's 46-year history. Founded in in 1946, the command was dissolved in a ceremony at Offutt Air Force Base.
OPPD worker Craig Azure of Ashland holds a power line up across Platteview Road near Highway 50 so that an Albatross airplane can fit under it. After SAC was dissolved, the museum moved into a new indoor facility in 1998. Airplanes were moved from their old location at Offutt Air Force Base to their new and current home near Mahoney State Park off I-80.
The parade grounds gazebo at Offutt is dedicated in honor of Airman 1st Class Warren T. Willis, who was killed in an aircraft accident the previous December.
President Bill Clinton speaks at a rally at Offutt Air Force Base.
More than 300 anti-nuclear protesters gather outside Kinney Gate at Offutt Air Force Base. The rally was part of a weekend of protest against nuclear weapons, and was organized in response to an extensive nuclear arsenal review being held at the base.
Vice President Dick Cheney greets service men and women following a speech at Offutt Air Force Base's Minuteman missile in Bellevue.
Dignitaries clap along to an armed forces medley as ground is broken for the new U. S. Strategic Command Headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base. From left: Neb. Rep. Adrian Smith, Rep. Lee Terry, Neb. Governor Dave Heineman, General C. Robert Kehler, Commander USStratcom, Sen. Ben Nelson, Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, and Mayor of Bellevue, Rita Sanders.
Chris Shotton created this thank you message to the airmen and troops flying in and out of Offutt Air Force Base. Employees of area Walmart stores have been writing giant messages in fields near Highway 370 for years.
Senior Airman Kevin Chapman works the desk at the new Public Health Clinic located in the Ehrling Bergquist military medical clinic.
The new MERLIN SS200m Aircraft Birdstrike Avoidance Radar System, with the control tower in the background, photographed at Offutt Air Force Base. The system was moved here from Afghanistan in order to help detect large flocks and prevent damages to aircraft from bids, which cost the Air Force millions of dollars each year.
An aerial photo from late February of the construction site for StratCom's new $1.2 billion headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base. Despite numerous delays and setbacks, the building would be completed in 2018, six years after construction began. StratCom would then spend the next year outfitting the structure with more than $600 million worth of high-tech communications and security gear.
President Barack Obama arrives in Omaha after landing at Offutt Air Force Base. While in Omaha, Obama met with the family of Kerrie Orozco, visited a local teacher, and addressed a crowd of about 8,000 at Baxter Arena.
This year, U.S. Strategic Command unveiled a new Command and Control Facility located at Offutt Air Force Base. The "battle deck," shown here, features computer workstations, soundproofing, and the ability to connect instantly to the White House and Pentagon.
Luke Thomas and Air Force Tech Sgt. Vanessa Vidaurre at a flooded portion of Offutt Air Force Base. In March, historic flooding included breaches of two levees protecting the base from the Missouri River.
sliewer@owh.com; twitter.com/Steve Liewer
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Steve is the military affairs reporter for The World-Herald. Follow him on Twitter @SteveLiewer. Phone: 402-444-1186.
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Members of the SAC Elite Guard security forces salute Queen Elizabeth II and Gen. Bennie Davis, commander of Strategic Air Command, during the queen’s brief visit to Offutt Air Force Base on Oct. 15, 1984.
Dorene Sherman, longtime deputy protocol director with the Strategic Air Command at Offutt Air Force Base, is shown in 2014. Sherman met and escorted Queen Elizabeth II during her visit to Offutt.
Dorene Sherman poses with former SAC Commander Gen. Jack Chain near the EC-135 Looking Glass aircraft at the Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum. Sherman was deputy chief of protocol at SAC during Chain's tenure from 1986 to 1991.
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