The USS Intrepid is more than a ship for those who served on her.

At 209 feet tall, she loomed higher than the Mercer County Courthouse. Her deck was 900 feet long and 3,000 sailors worked to make her a standout aircraft carrier that saw service in World War II and Vietnam and was a NASA recovery ship.

In battle, she sank 80 ships and destroyed more than 600 aircraft and was the most frequently hit aircraft carrier in World War II. Now she’s a learning tool, set to open this fall at a refurbished Pier 86 on the Hudson River in New York.

The Intrepid’s legacy was woven with Mercer Countians, including Greenville residents Dick Kennedy and Don Bee.

“My job was to service the weapons carried on torpedo planes that flew off the Intrepid,” Kennedy said. “Kamikaze seemed to be everywhere. Off Okinawa we took loss of life again and damage to the ship that forced us to return to California for repairs.”

Kennedy remembers returning to the Pacific and battling the Japanese one last time before steaming into Tokyo Bay for the end of the war.

“I was a plane director on the hangar deck,” Bee remembers. “Sometimes I’d crawl out on the catwalk forward on the ship just to be alone.”

He remembers when a kamikaze fighter dropped down in front of him and “pancaked onto the water.”

“The ship’s bow hit right behind the cockpit. The plane dived and disappeared as the ship’s momentum carried it over the plane. The pilot didn’t have a chance. After almost 60 years, I still remember seeing him,” Bee said.

Those memories will live again when the men are honored during this year’s Memorial Day 500.

Ray Stone, a plankowner of the Intrepid — one of the ship’s original crew — will deliver the keynote address.

Stone, of Salem, N.Y., served as a radarman in the ship’s Combat Intelligence Center.

He survived one torpedo and five kamikaze hits “without a scratch.”

His memoir, “My Ship, the USS Intrepid,” details his service.

Stone will speak during the Memorial Salute at Citizens Cemetery after the parade in Mercer.