Hill Air Force Base, the hub of northern Utah's economy, was not on the list of bases proposed for closure by the Pentagon. It stands to lose a net total of 145 out of its nearly 24,000 jobs.

“Our economic engine is going to stay intact,” said McConkie.

In fact, Davis and Weber counties as well as cities around the base will soon check out what spoils might be gained from less fortunate bases.

“We'll go out and analyze those being shut down and see what kind of opportunities there are to bring jobs into this area,” McConÂkie said. “Without a doubt it makes our position as a contributor to national security even safer.”

Folks who depend indirectly on the base for their livelihoods were celebrating as much as those with jobs on the base.

Gary Aber, a network analyst at Hill, said his friends in the construction business had been more fretful than he before Friday's announcement.

“I've had 10 calls this morning wondering if I've heard anything,” Aber said Friday. “They said if they closed the base, we might as well stick a fork in them because they're done.”

Molly Auvinen, who manages the Maverik down the road from the south gate, said 95 percent of her business comes from Hill employees.

“We all would have lost our jobs,” if the base were closed, she said.

George LaFigera, an aerospace engineer on base, was thrilled with the news. “Now I don't have to worry about where we'll move or whether I have to look for a new job,” he said.

Perhaps the least anxious Friday morning were the crowds of old-timers long retired from Hill, who have seen the base threatened with closure many times.

They gathered Friday, as on most mornings, at the Star Cafe in north Layton, where they teased each other almost as much as they bantered with the waitresses. No one paid attention to the television as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced the base closure list.

Clyde Kightly, a 23-year Navy veteran who also worked at Hill for several years, said his community would have been devastated. “If they closed, that would be one heck of a blow for Clearfield.”

His friend, 92-year-old Shirley Ball, of Kaysville, has been retired as a Hill firefighter for more than 30 years.

Ball said folks in northern Davis County were likely breathing easier now. “Most of them will be pretty happy.”

One member of an informal breakfast group, which alternately calls itself “knights of the round table” and “the old farts club,” said he personally might have stood to gain from a base closure.

Sheldon Fisher of Syracuse has been retired from Hill, where he was an electronics technician, for 15 years.

“I've been trying to get my wife to retire for 10 years and she won't do it,” grumbled Fisher. “She likes her job.”

Les Larson of Clearfield, a retiree from the heating and air conditioning business, said closure would not have been a disaster.

“It would take a few years, but private industry would move in,” Larson said.

Yet Jerry Stevenson, mayor of Layton and vice president of the Defense Alliance working to save Hill, said that is a mistaken notion.

“The economy in this area would not come back in my lifetime,” Stevenson said Friday from Washington D.C., where he met with Utah's congressional delegation.

While large metropolitan areas with small bases have recovered quickly in past base closures, others have not fared so well, he said.

San Antonio, where Kelly Air Force Base closed in the has recovered only 5,000 of the more than 13,000 jobs lost. Sacramento, Calif., which lost McClelland Air Force Base in that same round of closures, still has not fully recovered, Stevenson said.

Roy Mayor Roger Burnett said Rumsfeld was mistaken to propose any loss of jobs at Hill.

“With our quality of people and our work ethic here in the area, we should be one of those increasing in workload,” Burnett said.

Ogden's mayor, Matthew Godfrey, said he was relieved by Rumsfeld's recommendation.

The city's downtown is already in an economic slump, and though Weber County's economy depends less on Hill than does Davis', closure would have been more bad news for Ogden.

“I have my own list of challenges,” Godfrey said.