By Capt. Gerral David

Whidbey Island Naval Air Station

The Navy just celebrated our 234th birthday. Last month NAS Whidbey Island turned 67 and we celebrated the 11th anniversary of the PBY Memorial Foundation. Back in August I went on a trip to NAS Brunswick Maine to see a base that will be closing soon. All of those things made me start thinking about our past and our future — our legacy and our ethos.

How do we preserve our legacy? What contributes to our ethos? Preserving history sounds so formal. While it’s important to archive photos, artifacts and documents to ensure history isn’t lost, there’s another, more intangible legacy that has a life of its own. I think it is more about honoring our past than about preserving it. If we honor it and allow it to become part of us … part of our ethos … then we will lead lives that become worthy of being the history of future generations of Americans.

For NAS Whidbey Island, the Navy’s legacy, culture and way of life are inseparably intertwined with that of our surrounding community in a way that I didn’t fully understand until I had dinner recently with a longtime resident of Oak Harbor. Don Boyer was a boy when the base was built and has seen all of the changes through the entire history of the base. He has been a business owner and Navy League member amongst a host of other community endeavors. He has actually known all the base Commanding Officers that are just faces on a wall to me. He doesn’t live here year-round any longer because he chooses to go to warmer weather in the winter.

He told me he sometimes regrets not being around Oak Harbor more during the year so he could provide more support to the base. We talked about his legacy here and the people he has mentored in the community including the current mayor. I believe that Don Boyer doesn’t have to be here all year long because he helped create the community ethos that makes Oak Harbor such a great Navy town. His influence is here even when he is not. That is something you can be proud of.

In September the Oak Harbor community came out in droves to watch an old seaplane, a PBY-6A Catalina, fly into Crescent Harbor, land on the water, taxi up the ramp and park on a spot near the Navy Exchange that used to be a seaplane hangar. The plane stayed here a week and folks couldn’t get enough of it. It wasn’t just the old guys who used to fly it. I talked to a man who kept his kids out of school because this was a better history lesson. Nostalgia and wonder filled the air. People were dropping by and taking pictures of that beautiful old plane the whole time it was here, sharing a little bit of NAS Whidbey Island and what living in Oak Harbor was like “back then” with their neighbors, shipmates, children and grandkids. That is something you can be proud of.

Something as simple as an old airplane brings history to life. It represents the people who hold the memories in their hearts and minds of “what really happened.” And, it reminds us that 20, 40, 60 years down the road, what we’re living and accomplishing today will become tomorrow’s history.

Those of us in the Navy are a part of the cultural ethos of the communities that surround our bases. We make them richer and stronger, more vibrant and diverse. The true strength of our Navy is the people who devote their lives to a cause greater than themselves. That includes you who are reading this as well as those deployed around the world who have not shirked from duty … who stand the watch until relieved … and continue to make repeated sacrifices for our country.

America is the country she is because of young men and women who are willing to forego wearing a business suit, forego strolling down easy street, and forego living the good life, to wear instead the cloth of our Nation … to travel instead along an uncertain road fraught with peril. To live lives that matter.

Our Navy — America’s Navy — is forward deployed conducting a broad array of missions. America’s Navy is making the world a better place. America’s Navy is operating around the globe to protect U.S. and global interests. Just as it did 234 years ago and just as it will continue doing in the future. America’s Navy is a global force for good. We are building a better tomorrow.

That is our legacy. That is our ethos. That is something to be proud of.