Even on his 90th birthday, Dick Anable wasn’t spared any teasing by his wife.

Anable was sitting on his living room couch, holding a phone to his ear when the conversation turned to a story about his military service.

Only moments earlier, Anable was deep into more stories with a visitor while Evelyn Anable stayed out of range in the kitchen.

“He talks a lot,” Evelyn said as she entered the living room just as her husband hung up the phone.

“Evelyn, I have interesting stories,” he said.

“There are a lot of people who come back from the war and they’ve got war stories. Not me. But I’ve got a lot of interesting stories.”

Dick Anable has a gift for gab.

The longtime Oak Harbor resident is able to recall countless events in his life with vivid detail and no shortage of enthusiasm. Many of the events took place 70 years ago during his time as a C-46 cargo plane pilot with the U.S. Army Air Corp during World War II.

Anable was 19 and barely out of high school when he flew missions over the famed stretch of the Himalayan Mountains known as the “Hump,” re-supplying troops in the jungles below with munitions, food and medical supplies.

Among those he and his crew supplied during the airdrops in Southeast Asia was Merrill’s Marauders, a special operations unit named after general Frank Merrill that became famous for its deep penetration behind Japanese lines.

Flying from India to China over the “Hump” was considered particularly dangerous because of icing, overloading, extreme wind shifts and mechanical failures pilots faced.

Nearly 1,000 men and 600 Air Transport Command planes were lost over the “Hump” by the end of the China-Burma-India Theater operation.

Anable, who was a co-pilot, said he and his crew were lucky. He said he never felt his life threatened and never even saw a Japanese aircraft while traversing the 530-mile passage over the Himalayas.

Others were shot at with small arms from the ground, but he couldn’t recall any of his planes ever being struck.

The flying conditions, however, were another matter.

“These mountain ranges and gorges made for wild weather above,” he said. “We would have updrafts and downdrafts that you wouldn’t believe. You would go down a thousand feet a minute. You could climb when you hit the next pocket of air from an updraft.

“You couldn’t do anything about it. It did what it wanted to do.”

Anable said that his age might’ve had something to do with his lack of fear at that time.

“Later on, it was a little terrifying to me,” he said. “But at that time at 19 years old, it was kind of fun. You just rode it out. I don’t remember anybody who was really violently afraid.”

Anable said his squadron didn’t lose any aircraft from that sort of turbulence but did from the icy conditions.

“We didn’t have good de-icing equipment in those days,” he said.

Anable served a combined 23 years in the reserves in the Army Air Corp and Air Force, retiring as a major in 1966.

Raised on a Whatcom County farm in the community of Laurel, between Bellingham and Lynden, he returned to his Northwest roots in 1976 and moved to Oak Harbor two years later.

He’s never left.

“This is a nice little town really,” he said. “We don’t have a lot of crime and stuff. It was close to Bellingham.”

Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, with its hospital and nearby base golf course, suited Anable’s retirement living plans just fine.

He started attending Oak Harbor Church of Christ and began taking care of the grounds and making friends.

Even at 90, he and his wife Evelyn still take out the trash and recycling at the church every Tuesday.

“Everybody at the church knows Dick,” said Beverly Bergeron, a longtime member.

Bergeron said she remembers the impression Anable made on her when she first attended the church 18 years ago.

She said there weren’t many African-Americans such as herself at the church. The second time she attended, Anable greeted her by name.

“Dick was one of those people who made me feel so welcome,” Bergeron said.

Bergeron is organizing a birthday party for Anable, who turned 90 Thursday, at 6 p.m. March 25 at Oak Harbor Church of Christ.

“He’s a really, really sweet guy,” said Matt Oliver, minister at the church. “I’m growing in my understanding of who he is. There are so many layers to him.”

Anable met his second wife, the former Evelyn Hulst, on Whidbey Island, and they’ll be celebrating their 31st year of marriage later this month.

But there’s a birthday cake to prepare first.

Evelyn said Thursday she was planning to make her husband a German chocolate cake, his favorite.

Anable is still trim enough to fit into his military uniform and is in good but not perfect health, he said.

He’s battled through leukemia in 2002 with the cancer treatment leaving him with peripheral neuropathy, which causes stinging in the bottom of his feet and pain in his hands when they’re cold. He wears gloves to keep them warm.

Otherwise, his heart is healthy and cholesterol and blood pressure good to go along with another important asset.

He can recount many details of his 14 months of military service overseas during World War II like they were yesterday.

“I’ve got pretty good memory of that period,” Anable said. “I might forget something my wife tells me 30 minutes ago.”

Anable has a wealth of other stories from his well-traveled life and military service, his many cars and his roots on the farm in Laurel, where he was a member of Meridian High School’s tiny Class of 1943. He fondly looks back at a summer job he took as a teenager as a dishwasher at an old dining hall on the Seaplane Base.

Evelyn has heard them all.

“A million times,” she joked.

“For 32 years.”

“Thirty-one, Evelyn,” Dick said, correcting her.

Then he looked over at his wife and smiled.

“You don’t know anybody else who has a lot of stories like that,” he said.

“Pretty soon, there won’t be anybody. World War II guys are dying fast.”