ted stevens comes home in october

and the Navy has not done this in Alaska since 2013.

On October 3rd, in Whittier, a Navy ship carrying Ted Stevens' name officially enters service.

That is what a commissioning is. The ship is already built and the crew is already assigned. The ceremony is the moment it formally becomes an active Navy vessel, and the last one held in this state was for the ship named after Anchorage.

His widow Catherine Ann Stevens is expected to be there, along with both of his daughters.

Stevens served Alaska in the Senate from 1968 to 2009. Forty one years, the longest run any Republican has ever had in that building. Before any of it he was a decorated Army Air Corps pilot in the 1940s.

Ships get named after people constantly, and most of the time nobody outside the Navy ever notices. This one is going to get noticed here.

The ship is one of the newer ones in the fleet, built with a new radar system and upgraded power and cooling on board.

And then it leaves. After the ceremony it heads for its home port in Norfolk, Virginia, which is where it will actually live.

So October 3rd in Whittier is the only day this thing is an Alaska ship, sitting in Alaska water, with his family standing on the dock.