The base was put on high alert, and civilian access was all but forbidden. But they decided that on the third Saturday in October, their 16th annual holiday craft bazaar on the base would go on.

Still, Beaupre and the rest of the members of the Elmendorf Officers Spouses Organization couldn't help but wonder _ would it work?

The annual Holiday Crafts Bazaar has become an institution at this military installation next door to Anchorage. Arts and crafts hobbyists and professionals from all over the area bring their quilts and knit goods, wooden toys and carved moose antlers.

On Sept. 10, the officers' spouses club was busy with the usual bazaar details _ lining up parking, juggling job duties for nearly 100 volunteers and making road signs.

All that came to a halt the next day when terrorists crashed jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Elmendorf, its 6,500 active duty personnel and an estimated 13,000 spouses, children and civilian employees went on the highest alert.

The base is home to the 3rd Wing, comprised of F-15 fighters, cargo transport planes and E-3 AWACS radar planes. It's also home to the 11th Air Force and the Alaska Air Command.

On the following Sunday Beaupre got a desperate phone call.

"Our treasurer called me and said 'What about the bazaar?'" Beaupre said. "I thought we were going to have to cancel."

High alert meant strict limits on civilians. Coming on the base required special invitations, random vehicle searches and escorts. Opening the base to unlimited access was simply not an option.

Cancellation of the bazaar would have meant putting out nearly 200 vendors who counted on the sales. All the money raised by the event, an average $17,000 to $18,000, for college scholarships, base morale events and civilian community charities, would have been lost. And the civilian community looked forward to it.

That's when the "wives network" kicked in, said club member Rena Fraser.

"You know how it works," Fraser said. "One wife gets on the phone to another wife and says, 'Do you think the commander is going to let this go on?' We all just got on the phones and started calling around.

"Basically, the message was, 'We can still find a way to do this.'"

Col. Tim Van Splunder, 3rd support group commander, whose wife is also a spouses organization member, gave the OK. But there were conditions. Vendors had to undergo detailed searches of their vehicles and civilians were allowed on base only as guests of people with authorized military identification.

But Friday night and Saturday morning, about 190 crafts people waited up to two hours to endure the security precautions. And, although the crowd was decidedly smaller than in previous years, shoppers came to browse and buy.

"I just feel I had to come," said Nancy Nolfi, peddling her handmade jewelry. "With things the way they are now for the military, now, more than ever, we need to be there for them."

Bazaar organizers took as a victory the fact that the bazaar even happened this year. They are already planning for next year.

"We've all got to learn to function in this new environment," said club president Cheryl Sorensen. "But we want life to go on as close to normal as possible. It's challenging, but it's not that it can't be done."

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