By Nate Jones

Staff Writer 

After 24 years in the Navy, 46-year-old South Portland native Capt. Mark Whitney will be appointed the new commander of the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance facility in Bremerton, Wash. 

Whitney said the coastal northwest often reminds him of the rocky Maine shoreline, where he still visits his mother Linda Johnson several times a year. 

“We’re not able to visit as much as she would like,” he said. 

Puget Sound is one of only four Navy-owned public shipyards in the country, Whitney said. Others include the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Va., and Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard in Hawaii. 

“I’ll be the head honcho of about 10,000 military and civilian workers on the base,” he said. 

Whitney said he “simply wanted to go to sea” when he graduated from South Portland High School, a dream that landed him at Maine Maritime Academy (MMA) in Castine, where he earned a degree in mechanical engineering. 

“My senior year I was looking for a job and one of my professors said there was only one place hiring, and they all had grey hulls,” Whitney said. 

Whitney attended an officer school in Newport, R.I. before being commissioned as an Ensign in 1984. His first post was onboard the 40-year-old USS Luce, a 550-foot destroyer sailing out of Jacksonville, Fla.

“She was old but a good ship,” he said. “It was a good experience.”

After two years aboard the Luce and another two years in a different destroyer squadron, Whitney joined the U.S. Special Operations Command in Washington D.C. He met his future wife Lisa while he served as the plan and program officer, and was introduced to her as part of his training there.

“She was working as a contractor training the command on the new local area network,” he said.

In 1990, Whitney helped support Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm as part of a Crisis Action Team before transferring into the Navy’s Engineering Duty Officer Program. Four years later, he received a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School in California, where he moved shortly after marrying Lisa.

“Just being a husband and wife on the West Coast without any kids was pretty cool,” he said.

After earning his master’s degree, Whitney served as an assistant naval reactors representative at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia and an assistant project officer at the Newport News Shipbuilding Company in Rhode Island. Whitney oversaw various repairs and construction projects on several nuclear powered aircraft carriers and submarines.

Whitney spent six months in 1998 studying the 1,000-foot nuclear powered USS Theodore Roosevelt Nimitz class aircraft carrier as part of a maintenance program. 

“It provided me with a great opportunity to learn about the people onboard and begin to develop a working relationship,” he said. 

It was the beginning of an extended attachment to the one million ton vessel. Whitney served as the chief electrical engineer for seven months when the Theodore Roosevelt was deployed to support Operation Enduring Freedom following the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

“We set the ‘Iron Man’ record with 169 consecutive days at sea without making port,” he said. “The days kind of flew by, but toward the end a good portion of the men, who joined the Navy to see other places, weren’t so happy. They were glad when we finally did make port.”

Whitney said the deployment was one of the toughest experiences he has had as a sailor. Even after training for years, conducting actual combat missions was more difficult than he had expected.

“We were actually in a war and doing what we were trained to do,” he said. “It was just a huge challenge to get everything done.”

Whitney said it wasn’t until this deployment that he realized just how seasoned a sailor he has become.

“I suddenly realized there were sailors working under me and I could have been their father,” he said. “That was strange.”

It was the beginning of a senior officer career he hadn’t considered when he joined the Navy.

“If I could have stayed on as a chief engineer I would have,” he said. “That’s not the way it works though; you have to aspire to bigger things in the military.”

Although his position as chief engineer was largely a supervisor’s role, Whitney said he relied heavily on his MMA electrical training during his duties.

“I didn’t get to do much hands-on work,” he said. “But there were many dirty, smelly and dark places onboard where a sailor would look back and see me right behind them. I could take apart anything on any ship and feel comfortable doing it, which helped me tremendously.”

In 2004, Whitney was first introduced to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard as an operations officer. Two years later he returned to Washington D.C., where he served as assistant deputy commander for Industrial Operations, Naval Sea Systems Command.

The navy announced Whitney’s new position at the Puget Sound facility in December 2007. Although he will be stationed in Washington, Whitney said his new position does not necessarily mean he will be able to stay in one place for very long. 

“The work we have to do is very geographically dispersed,” he said.

The various projects Whitney is to oversee will take place in locations all over the world, which can put a strain on personnel, he said.

“With the addition of some work to be done in Japan we’ll have to watch out for the workforce,” he said. “We can’t burn the people out.”

 As the father of 10-year-old twin boys, Whitney said it hasn’t been easy to meet the demands of the Navy and still have time for family and friends.

“Finding the balance between home and work can be tough, but I certainly don’t live with any regrets,” he said. 

When it comes to the military, the best thing a sailor can do is keep their doors open, Whitney said. 

“You have to follow your heart,” he said. “Remain focused on your training, try and stay connected with home, look toward the finish line and hope you get there.”