Base History – 2020 – The Puget Soundings

January began like any other year, and that may be the strangest part of the whole story.

The base gathered. Officers were installed. There was energy, momentum, and the quiet expectation of a full calendar ahead. Meetings, Soup Downs, parades, the scholarship program, all the familiar markers of a healthy organization. Nothing in those early weeks suggested that within a matter of months, nearly all of it would vanish.

By February, the machinery was still running. Plans were being made, responsibilities assigned, and the base moved forward with purpose. If there was any hint of what was coming, it had not yet taken hold. The year still felt normal. Predictable.

Then March arrived, and with it, the world changed.

By April, the shift was undeniable. The base had not held an in-person meeting since February. Everything stopped. Meetings were canceled. Events postponed. The calendar, once full, was suddenly empty. The phrase “ground to a halt” was not an exaggeration. It was reality.

For an organization built on gathering, that was more than an inconvenience. It was an existential problem.

And yet, something happened in that moment that tells you exactly what this base was made of.

They adapted.

March saw the first virtual meeting in the base’s history. Not because it was convenient. Because it was necessary. Technology, once a supplement, became the lifeline. It was not perfect. It was not the same. But it was something, and in 2020, something was enough.

April and May became months of uncertainty. No one knew what would come next. Events were not just postponed, they were placed in a kind of limbo. The Armed Forces Day parade, Soup Downs, gatherings that had defined the base for years, all subject to the same question.

When can we come back?

There was no answer.

What emerged instead was a kind of disciplined patience. Submariners understand confinement. They understand operating under restriction. The phrase “be flexible” surfaced again, not as a slogan, but as a survival tool.

By June, the reality had settled in. This was not a short disruption. It was a long haul.

The base continued to function, but in a different form. Virtual meetings replaced physical ones. Communication shifted to email, websites, and social media. Members checked in on one another, not across a table, but across a screen. It lacked the warmth of a handshake, but it carried the same intent.

And there was something else, quieter but more important.

The base took care of its own.

Members who were at risk, who needed help with groceries or essential supplies, were not left alone. The network held. That is the kind of detail that does not make headlines, but it tells you everything about the character of the group.

Summer arrived, but it did not bring relief.

July, August, and September read like a slow grind. Meetings canceled. The annual picnic, one of the few purely social anchors of the year, set aside. Not debated. Not delayed. Simply recognized as too risky.

The imagery from that period is telling. The pandemic described as a kind of sea creature, wrapping itself around everything, pulling normal life down into the depths. It is not poetic exaggeration. It is exactly how it felt.

And still, the base did not stop.

Zoom meetings continued. E-Board sessions adapted. Communication flowed, even if the channels had changed. It was not business as usual. But it was business.

Fall brought no clear resolution.

October carried a tone of fatigue, but also determination. The hope of returning to in-person meetings lingered, tied to holidays, to the idea that maybe by Christmas things would be different. But even that hope was cautious. Conditional.

The base followed state guidance, waited for direction, and in the meantime, kept itself together the only way it could.

Digitally. Remotely. Patiently.

And yet, even in that isolation, something unexpected emerged.

Connection.

Zoom meetings became more than just business. They became a substitute for the conversations that used to happen after meetings, the sea stories, the laughter, the small talk that never makes it into minutes but forms the backbone of camaraderie. It was not the same. But it mattered.

There was also a shift in thinking. A recognition that the base needed to be relevant not just to the past, but to the future. That newer generations of submariners would need to see themselves in the organization. That the past mattered, but it could not be the only story told.

December arrived without the resolution everyone had hoped for.

The Christmas party, once a certainty, became a question mark. Plans were tentative, contingent, uncertain. The idea of “returning to normal” no longer felt like a date on a calendar. It felt like something abstract.

And yet, the base endured.

That is the word that defines 2020.

Not thrived. Not expanded. Endured.

It maintained leadership.
It maintained communication.
It maintained connection.

And perhaps most importantly, it maintained identity.

Because here is the truth, stripped of sentiment.

A base like this does not exist because of meetings or events.
It exists because of people who refuse to let it die.

2020 tested that.

And the Bremerton Base passed.

No parades.
No picnics.
No crowded meeting rooms filled with laughter and bad coffee.

Just a group of submariners, scattered, isolated, adapting to a world that had suddenly turned hostile in a different way.

And still, they showed up.