Last Strike For Bowling Alley That Helped Anchor Many Veterans
About 60 people gathered inside a modest bowling alley recently at Naval Support Activity Bethesda, a military base in a Maryland suburb of Washington D.C., to say goodbye to a place that many of them call their second home.
The 40-year-old alley shut down on Aug. 21 because of apparent funding constraints and a steady decline in customers over the past three years. Built in 1979, it needs about $500,000 in repairs to its pinsetters and lanes, according to the installation's public affairs office.
But people who have been bowling there for years, many on a weekly basis, feel hurt and angry about the decision to shutter the alley. To them, it signals a lack of concern for recovering soldiers and their families. They see the alley as one of the few places in the region where civilians and military can mix.
"I know that this bowling alley has saved multiple lives, including my own," said Michael Marquette, a retired Navy corpsman medic who sustained multiple injuries while serving in Iraq. He has post-traumatic stress disorder and rarely leaves the house except to bowl. He even met his wife at the alley.
Marquette sees the alley as a transition zone where veterans like him can take cautious steps back into civilian life. For others, base bowling alleys like the one at NSA Bethesda provide a sense of the familiar amid the uncertainty of war, foreign deployment or recovery.
"It's a constant," said Michael Shannon, a combat veteran who served in Operation Desert Storm. He grew up in a military family and remembers visiting bowling alleys all around the U.S. as a kid.
"The hardest thing is to recover after the traumatic event of a move," he said, "and the best way to do that is [to have] familiar environments and places where you can go and you can have a sense of normalcy out of the chaos."
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