REHEATING A COLD WAR History buff's mission: Preserve Jersey's missile sites

Star Ledger ^ | 11.15.05 | BRAD PARKS

[Coleus]

Right until he settles into the chair, you would never know he has it in him. He's just Don Bender, a mild-mannered, middle-aged advertising consultant and amateur historian with a thing for tweed jackets.

Then he sits.

Suddenly, with a bank of radar screens and a wall full of buttons and knobs in front of him, he's Don Bender, missile commander. The Red Menace needs to be shot out of the sky, and the launch button at his fingertips for the nuclear-tipped Nike missile is America's last line of defense.

"We've got a Russian bomber 110 miles out," Bender yells to his imaginary crew. "Ajax, all channels. On my mark, switching to HIPAR. ... Target engaged. Firing in 3 ... 2 ..."

Then, just as you think rocket noises are going to start coming out of his mouth, the guy in the tweed jacket resumes talking about a subject that is, for him, no imaginary matter: Nike missile sites and other vestiges of Cold War-era New Jersey are quickly being lost to history, and Bender has made it his personal mission to preserve them.

He has an encyclopedic knowledge of the state's former radar installations, missile magazines, bomb shelters and barracks -- all the things that make him call New Jersey "the front lines" of the Cold War. And he has organized those sites into what he calls the New Jersey Cold War Heritage Trail.

The word "trail" gives it perhaps a little more credit than it's due -- it's really just a collection of places unconnected by any roadway, signage or anything more substantial than Bender's Web site www.donbender.biz/njtrail.  But he's hoping the concept will make others as enthusiastic about the subject as he is.

[JRios1968]

Bender's Web site www.donbender.biz/njtrail.

"And if you don't like my website, you can kiss my shiny metal..."

[XRdsRev]

As an historian who is involved in the preservation of New Jersey's Revolutionary War sites, I wish Mr. Bender well.

My father served in missle defence at Sandy Hook among other locations and it is important to preserve and interpret some of these sites so that people will never forget the threats this country and the New York/Philadelphia region faced during the Cold War.

Unfortunately here in New Jersey, when it comes down to historic preservation versus development, development almost always wins. As one politician once told me, "George Washington can't vote or contribute to a campaign. Developers, construction workers and home buyers can and do".