NSA Bethesda Bowling Alley Closes Due To Financial Woes: Report

BETHESDA, MD — Naval Support Activity Bethesda's bowling alley — a place veterans say got them through difficult times — has recently closed.

According to WAMU, the 40-year-old bowling center on the military base shut down on Aug. 21 "due to apparent funding constraints and a steady decline in customers over the past three years." The center reportedly needed $500,000 in repairs to its pinsetters and lanes.

Built in 1979, the bowling alley has been a second home for service members and veterans in the region. Many of the people who've been bowling there were reportedly upset when they heard the center was closing for good. To them, the bowling alley was a place where civilians and the military could mix, according to WAMU.

Michael Marquette was a Navy corpsman medic in Iraq. The veteran says he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and rarely leaves his Clarksburg home — unless he's bowling.

"I know that this bowling alley has saved multiple lives, including my own," Marquette told WAMU.

According to the news outlet, Marquette saw the bowling center as a place where veterans like him could slowly adjust to civilian life.

"I bowled with service members who were double amputees. We formed bonds, and many of us who had nothing to do found relief through social gathering and therapy," Marquette said to WAMU.

The bowling alley, some say, has also given military members a sense of normalcy during war and recovery.

"It's a constant," Michael Shannon, a combat veteran who served in Operation Desert Storm, told WAMU.

"The hardest thing is to recover after the traumatic event of a move," Shannon said, "and the best way to do that is (to have) familiar environments and places where you can go and you can have a sense of normalcy out of the chaos."

Although a steady stream of military members pay to bowl at the center, the alley has not made a profit in nearly two years, WAMU reports. Captain Mary Seymour, the installation's commanding officer, told the outlet that officials decided to use the funds for more "viable programs."

"It was a command decision not to put appropriated funds towards the Bowling Center because it was losing money," Seymour said in a statement to the outlet.