A coterie of veterans reunited on the North End of Whidbey last month in celebration of an important anniversary.

This year marks 40 since the commissioning of the USS Whidbey Island, the first amphibious dock landing ship of its class and a fitting namesake for an island with a lengthy military history. Eight crew members, some with family and friends in tow, toured Oak Harbor on Sept. 14.

Scott LaPlante, president of the USS Whidbey Island Association, said the day’s adventures kicked off with dining with Capt. Nathan Gammache on the base, continued with a tour of VP-69 along with a visit to the Pacific Northwest Naval Air Museum and ended meeting Mayor Ronnie Wright at Oak Harbor City Hall.

“It was a great day,” LaPlante said. “The fact that it had been 40 years since any of us had been there was — (the crew members) were just like, ‘This is fantastic.’”

The USS Whidbey Island was built in Seattle, LaPlante explained, and visited the island only once in 1985 before being decommissioned in 2022.

“We were in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean, and the Mediterranean and all that, but never came back to the Pacific,” he reflected.

Bringing those connected to one another by the ship together, then, is crucial to preserving the USS Whidbey Island’s legacy locally.

“You want to keep the memory of the ship alive. The ship is a living thing, it becomes part of you,” LaPlante said. “And the fact that the ship served the United States for 38 years is pretty impressive.”