Birds on the Brain

Perhaps it is fitting that the leading employer in this often ignored place is an industry that only whispers its name. Aurora’s central location, high elevation, and clear prairie air long ago moved the Pentagon to locate classified and high-tech radar arrays on the edge of town. As a boy I would look from my bedroom window at the mysterious giant golf ball shapes and picture the Soviet missiles homing in on them. Aurora was certainly on the Kremlin’s map during the Cold War. Since 9/11, that function has been expanded, and now the Buckley Air Force Base employs more than 12,000 people to monitor spy satellites and Predator drones and who knows what all secret business. Defense contractors like Raytheon and Northrup-Grumman employ thousands more. It’s a shame that those extraordinary devices, which can see a man walking in the Yemeni desert or spy a campsite beside the Khyber Pass can’t discern a deranged individual and his growing arsenal in time to prevent a massacre down the street. There would be more people alive in Aurora today, and fewer grieving families. And the overlooked city would still be largely unknown, which, we now see, is not so bad after all.