PORTLAND – Worried that his family would have to pick up stakes and move from their home in Berwick if his father loses his job at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, 6-year-old Kyle Kruse sought to take his concerns to the top.

Kyle scratched out a message to President Bush in crayon, complete with a drawing of a submarine to represent the vessels that are worked on at the Kittery yard.

“Save our shipyard,” he wrote. “I don’t want to move and live in a cardboard box.”

Kyle’s letter was among 180,000 that have been sent to the Base Realignment and Closure commission as it prepares to vote on which of the bases targeted by the Defense Department will be closed and which will be spared.

The voting, which begins Wednesday, is being watched closely in Maine, where the fate of Portsmouth, Brunswick Naval Air Station and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service office in Limestone hangs in the balance.

Robert McNally of Old Orchard Beach wrote one of the hundreds of letters that focused on the Maine bases. McNally detailed the cost savings from repairing submarines at Portsmouth, the extra cost of replacing Brunswick flights with those from Jacksonville Naval Air Station in Florida and the operational costs of the Limestone office.

“Clearly the Navy’s case for realignment of NASB and closure of PNS and the consolidation of DFAS activities has not been validated,” he wrote.

Katharine Ainsworth Semmes of Scarborough, the daughter, widow and mother of men who served in the military, questioned putting “all your eggs in one basket” by closing Portsmouth and Brunswick. She said the decisions would concentrate too many resources in Norfolk, Va., and leave New England without immediate air response to a threat.

Semmes said her father, Rear Adm. Walden Lee Ainsworth, served as chief of naval personnel during World War II. Her husband, Vice Adm. Benedict Joseph Semmes, held the same post during Vietnam. And her son, Dr. Benedict Joseph Semmes, also served in Vietnam.

“This is not economy; this endangers the country. It is shortsighted and foolhardy,” Semmes wrote. “At a time of recruitment and enlistment problems, with an unpopular and divisive war with no honorable end in sight, think twice before you damage morale further and destroy our proud Navy institutions.”

David Murphy of Lisbon Falls, a retired chief petty officer who worked for 20 years at Brunswick, worried about how the community would cope with losing thousands of jobs and taxpaying residents.

“I pray that you will make the correct decision for the people of Maine, that it’s a decision you can live with,” Murphy wrote.

Kyle and his 9-year-old sister, Samantha, each wrote a letter. Their mother, Michelle Kruse, said Samantha was even able to hand a copy to the driver for one commissioner, retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Sue Turner, as she toured the shipyard.

Michelle Kruse said her family has been in Maine for nearly four years and would prefer not to move again. Although she has tried to reassure Kyle the family won’t have to live in a box, the waiting has been difficult.

“I told him I’m sure that his dad would find another job – that we’re not going to have to live in a box. He just looks at me and says we’ll have to live in a box,” Michelle Kruse said. “It’s real scary.”