Pure party politics, but it probably won't go anywhere. That's the feeling of people I talked to in Jacksonville. He also thinks the population density around Keesler and Dobbins would forbid the kind of training flights the pilots do now in sparsely-settled rural Arkansas. Mayor Tommy Swaim says that plans to train some C130 pilots elsewhere have been known for a year. Three businessmen already had asked him that morning if the base was really in danger.
Rumors make existing businesses uneasy and keep new ones from moving in.
Sherwood, Jacksonville's next door neighbor, has always wanted a hotel, Swaim said, and finally someone agreed to build one. But when another negative rumor about the base started going around a couple of years ago, the builder changed his mind. Arkansas Writers' Project, Inc.