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News

2008 FLYING SEASON KICKS OFF SATURDAY, 19 APRIL

CONTACT:  Earl Morse                                                                           FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WORK:  937 521-2400                                                                                                             16 April 2008

Email:  HonorFlight@aol.com

 

HONOR FLIGHT NETWORK BEGINS 2008 FLYING SEASON 

 

Springfield, OH – On Saturday, 19 April, seven groups from across America will ascend on Washington D.C. with OVER 440 WWII veterans to visit their memorial.  These senior heroes will be arriving from seventeen (17) states.

 

These groups will be met at Baltimore-Washington International, Reagan and Dulles International Airports upon their arrival with pomp and circumstance de-fitting these of America’s “Greatest Generation”.

 

They will be taken by approximately 19 motor coaches to the WWII Memorial where they will be greeted by Senator Bob Dole, another of their “battle buddies” throughout the day.

 

The schedule at the WWII Memorial is as follows:

 

Honor Flight Michigan – 36 vet/19 guardians – 9:15 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.

Honor Flight Dayton Ohio – 57 vets/20 guardians – 10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. (this is the Honor Flight Founder, Earl Morse’s group’s first flight of the season and will be met at BWI upon their arrival at BWI at 8:30 a.m. AirTran Flt #413 by the Patriot Guard Riders from Maryland and our D.C. volunteers

Honor Flight Rochester Minnesota – 79 vets/32 guardians – 11:30 a.m. - 1:45 p.m.

Honor Flight Tennessee Valley, Alabama – 125 vets/125 guardians – 10:30 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.

TLC (their last chance) and Lone Eagles (don’t have a hub near them) 28 TLC/Lone Eagles – 10-45 – 1:15

Honor Flight Columbus Ohio - 34 vets/21 guardians – 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.  

Pride and Honor Flight Michigan – 81 vets/34 guardians – 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

 

For more information contact

 

Susan Barr PR/Media Relations, (740) 524-7744

or Earl Morse, Founder, Honor Flight Network (937) 409-8387

 

November, 2007:  Radio Interview by Jerry Newberry on the VFW's radio show, "The National Defense" with Jim McLaughlin, Vice President, Honor Flight International

PRESS RELEASE 11/21/2007 :

Honor Flight Network Headquarters

 

CONTACT:  Earl Morse                                                                           FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WORK:  937 521-2400

CELL:    937 409-8387

Email:  HonorFlight@aol.com

 

VETERAN SIGN-UP TO COINCIDE WITH

OBSERVANCE OF PEARL HARBOR DAY, 7 DECEMBER.

 

Springfield, OH – Every World War II Veteran can remember where they were when President Franklin Roosevelt addressed the nation and said, “Yesterday, December seventh, nineteen forty-one, a date which will live in infamy, the United States was suddenly and deliberately attacked by the naval and air forces of the empire of Japan.”  Their lives were changed on that day.  The Honor Flight Network is committed to positively changing the lives of these same WWII Veterans with a trip to Washington DC, to visit their long-awaited WWII Memorial. 

 

On Friday, 7 December 2007, from 4:00 PM until 8:00 PM, locations throughout Ohio will be assisting veterans with completing the Honor Flight Veteran’s Application.  The trips are funded by donations.  Honor Flight gladly accepts donations from anyone except for WWII Veterans.  The program feels that these veterans have given enough.  In addition to WWII Veterans, the program focuses on any Korean or Vietnam Veteran with a terminal illness, who has never been able to visit their memorial in DC.  Those veterans are given the same priority as a WWII Veteran.

 

Selected locations will have applications and volunteers readily available to help complete the paperwork.  Veterans desiring to take the trip are asked to bring with them their list of medications and a photo ID.  Once completed, the applications will be forwarded to the Honor Flight Network Headquarters in Springfield Ohio.  The 2007 flying season ended November 7.  Between now and next spring, flights are suspended to avoid freezing temperatures, ice, sleet, and snow.  “Our number one concern is safety,” remarked Earl Morse.  “We spend the off season collecting applications, raising awareness of our program and getting better organized for our flights to resume in the spring of 2008.”

 

So far, over 5000 WWII Veterans have been safely transported to Washington DC, from 19 different states, to personally tour America’s “Thank You” for their service.  These trips are free to the WWII Veterans.  During the day, veterans are escorted and cared for by “guardians.”  Guardians are next-generation family members and/or volunteers who accompany the veterans on their trip.  Participants visit the WWII, Korean, Vietnam and Iwo Jima Memorials.  Flights, meals, tee shirts and deluxe motor coach services are provided at no cost to the WWIII Veterans.  The flight returns later that same evening. 

 

“Time is of the essence,” said Earl Morse, Founder and President of Honor Flight, Inc.  “In another five to ten years, almost all of them (WWII Veterans) will be gone.  There is a very narrow window available to us to make their dreams of visiting their memorial, a reality.”  According to the Department of Veterans Affairs and Arlington National Cemetery statistics, in 2007 about 1,200 WWII Veterans will pass away EVERY DAY.  The youngest WWII Vet is 79 years old.  Over 70 WWII Veterans on the waiting list have passed away, patiently waiting their turn.  Honor Flight presently has over 4000 WWII Veterans on their national waiting list.  They are asking for public support to help make the dreams of these veterans come true … before it’s too late. 

 

While veterans will fly for free, guardians are asked to cover their own expenses of about $250.00.  The contribution includes round trip airfare, meals, deluxe tour bus, tee shirts and insurance.  If you would like more information about the Honor Flight, please visit our web site at www.HonorFlight.org, call (937) 521-2400, or write: Honor Flight Inc., 300 E. Auburn Ave, Springfield OH 45505.

 

Participating locations include:

 

            VFW Post 1031

            1237 E. Main St.

Springfield, OH  45503

 

Phone:  937 325-3011

 

 

The Times Reporter - Dover, New Philadelphia Ohio - September 2007

A big Thank You - Area men among WW II veterans visiting nation's capital

Well-wishers fill the arrival gate at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., to cheer at the arrival of northeast Ohio World War II veterans.

 

 

 

T-R photos/Noah Blundo
 

By NOAH BLUNDO, T-R Staff Writer

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Four guys were clustered around a park bench on the national mall on Saturday afternoon, taking a load off and shooting the breeze.

Suddenly, a short woman in a bright shirt came walking along the path. She turned to face them and said, “Thanks for our freedom,” then walked away.

“That’s something I never expected would happen today,” said David Miskimen.

The 85-year-old Dover resident – like his three compatriots at the bench and more than 90 other northeast Ohioans in the nation’s capital on Saturday – is a World War II veteran. He flew bombing missions from England as a B-17 pilot in the 8th Air Force.

Though the woman’s gratitude surprised him, many similar scenes played out Saturday.

“How many of you had someone come up to you today and say, ‘Thank you for your service,’” Earl Morse asked a bus full of the veterans later that day. Dozens of hands shot up.

Morse is the director and founder of Honor Flight, a Springfield-based program with a simple mission: to fly World War II veterans, at no charge to them, to see the memorial built in their honor. On Saturday, 98 veterans made the trip.

Morse, a retired Air Force captain, started making the flights when he was a physician’s assistant with the Department of Veterans Affairs in Springfield. He started asking the veterans if they would be going to see the World War II memorial after it was completed in 2004. Yes, most said.

But on return visits, most hadn’t been there. Health and age often prevented solo trips, and many couldn’t get friends or family to take them. So one day, Morse asked a vet if he wanted to go with him and his father, Erlis, also an Air Force veteran, in their small plane to see the monument for free.

“I was ready for him to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or ‘I’ll ask my wife,’ but I wasn’t ready for him to start crying,” Morse said.

So on May 21, 2005, six small planes carrying 12 veterans made the first Honor Flight, a program that now sends regular commercial flights to Washington from Columbus, Cleveland and other cities and has spawned similar programs in North Carolina and Utah.

Saturday’s journey began in the dark, with veterans arriving before dawn to get their tickets and T-shirts and pass through the lengthy screening process at the gate. As it turns out, even World War II veterans have to take their shoes off for security.

Their U.S. Airways charter flight featured a handpicked crew.

“They could be flying sports teams, they could be flying Fortune 500 companies, but usually when they hear it’s an Honor Flight, it’s the first flight they sign up for,” Morse said.

Throughout the screening and boarding process, and as it would be for the rest of the day, the veterans were closely shadowed by dozens of Honor Flight Guardians, often family members or younger veterans who make sure the veterans want for as little as possible through the day-long trips. To make sure veterans can fly for free, guardians foot the bill for their own trips.

“They have paid cash money to have the honor and privilege of being here with you,” Morse said.

When the Honor Flight plane touched down at Reagan National Airport in northern Virginia, it wheeled between geysers shot from two neon fire engines – a ritual of honor traditionally performed for military pilots making their last flight.

In the airport concourse, the welcome was a flurry of flags, balloons and clapping, with dozens of people cheering wildly as each veteran walked past.

“I never expected anything like this. It was really nice,” said Alex Bellanca, 86, of Dover, an Army veteran who landed at Omaha Beach. “I’ll never forget it.”

From the airport, three buses wound their way through the streets of the capital and past the Washington Monument to deposit the veterans at their destination – the World War II Memorial. Akron veteran Frank Castellucio, 87, led them to it, carrying a flag that had draped the coffin of a World War II veteran who never made it to the monument. The honor of doing so was sprung on him at the last minute.

“I didn’t know it at all, that was a surprise,” said Castellucio, who was wounded during the Battle of the Bulge.

The veterans spent the next three hours wandering the monument, along with Honor Flight participants from other cities – about 850 veterans in total. At times they were treated to an explanation of the monument’s features by Ray Kaskey, its chief sculptor, and a greeting from former Kansas Sen. Bob Dole, who helped lead the charge for the memorial to be built.

Before lunch, Joe Nazionale of Dennison and Donald Caskey of Orrville were chatting at one of two flagpoles marking the entrance to the memorial.

“The funny times, the good times, they come real fast ... the bad times, they sort of fade on out the back,” said Nazionale, who did tank maintenance and delivered dispatches on the back of motorcycles.

Suddenly, a man from California came up and asked for a picture with the two. The man, Peter Beuchler, was in town for business but couldn’t pass up the opportunity to snap a photo with two World War II veterans.

“We just got lucky and got to meet some of the people the memorial was built for,” Beuchler said after looking through an album handed to him by Caskey, who served in the Air Force.

The veterans were complimentary of the memorial built in their honor.

“It’s a lot more than I expected really,” said Miskimen, the B-17 pilot. “I had seen pictures, but a picture doesn’t tell the whole story.”

Harold Stoner, 86, of Navarre, a veteran of the Army Air Corps, said the monument is “not so much for us guys who are still living. It’s nice to see it, but it’s for those guys who didn’t make it.”

However, Morse, the Honor Flight founder, is very concerned about the guys who did make it, for a somber reason.

Actually, more like 1,200 somber reasons – that’s the number of World War II vets who die every day by Honor Flight’s estimate.

That gives him an increasingly shorter window of opportunity and a strong need for donations. The charter flight alone was about $35,000, and it fit only about a quarter of the veterans who applied to go.

“They all deserve to see their memorial. The sad thing is ... if there’s not enough support in the community, we have no choice but to fly from somewhere else,” Morse said.

That’s why Bill Bevan of New Philadelphia led the effort for the New Philadelphia Veterans of Foreign Wars to help support an Honor Flight from Akron-Canton airport. The post ended up donating $10,000.

Bevan was an Honor Flight Guardian Saturday.

“I didn’t do this to get a pat on the back,” said Bevan, who joined the Navy in 1950 and later served in the Army. “All I care about is these guys and what they did for this country.”

The veterans also toured the Vietnam, Korean War and Lincoln memorials, hopped a bus to the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial in northern Virginia, then stopped off at another American mainstay: an all-you-can eat buffet.

Then it was back to the airport, back on the plane and back to Akron.

As they filtered off the plane and went down the hallway toward the main concourse, a band struck up and dozens more cheering well-wishers clapped and waved flags, echoing the sentiment printed on the back of the Honor Flight guardians’ T-shirts, a quote from Will Rogers that reads: “We can’t all be heroes.

“Some of us get to stand on the curb and clap as they go by.”
 

 

American Profile.com - July 29, 2007

by Marcia Schonberg
Earl Morse was working as a physician assistant in 2004 at a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs medical clinic in Springfield, Ohio, when he asked a simple question that changed his life. Morse asked one of his patients, 78-year-old World War II veteran Leonard Loy, whether he’d thought about visiting the National World War II Memorial, which recently had opened in Washington, D.C.

Loy shook his head sadly. “Mama’s been sick and we don’t have the money,” he said. “And we don’t have any way to get out there.”

Morse, himself a licensed pilot and former U.S. Air Force captain, had just rented a private Cessna plane and was going to fly his father, a Vietnam War veteran, to the nation’s capital to see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. He had an idea, a casual invitation that didn’t seem like such a big deal at the time. “My dad and I are renting a plane,” he told Loy. “If you’d like to go, it won’t cost you a penny.”

Loy didn’t say anything, but the tears in his eyes spoke volumes.

“That’s when it hit me, ‘This means more than I thought,’” says Morse, 48.

In the months that followed, Morse’s casual invitation to help a fellow military veteran turned into a nationwide quest. For more than two years now, he’s been flying World War II veterans to see the memorial erected in their honor on the National Mall. Since founding his nonprofit Honor Flight Network in 2005, he has taken more than 1,000 veterans from around the country to the memorial—and it hasn’t cost any of them one red cent.

“I’ve had a lot of veterans tell me this trip was the greatest day of their life,” Morse says.

A grassroots effort
After that first trip in the Cessna with his father and Loy, Morse enlisted the help of some pilot friends in Dayton, Ohio, and organized more day trips. The grassroots effort grew as word spread and donations increased, and Morse soon was purchasing blocks of tickets on commercial flights for larger groups, and coordinating flights from across the country.

“So far, we’re in 11 states,” says Honor Flight’s director of operations, Al Bailey, 60. “Setting up Honor Flight hubs will help us reach our goal.”

That goal is to ensure that all living World War II veterans get a chance to see the memorial that was erected to honor their service and sacrifice.

Morse remembers a call going out in the late 1990s for World War I veterans in the central Ohio area to give them special-recognition medals. Only two were located, and the thought of “too little, too late” stays with Morse to this day. “I didn’t want World War II vets to not be able to see America’s thank-you to their service,” he says.

Honor Flight is volunteer-staffed and donation-funded. Morse gave up his Veterans Affairs job and now works part-time at a medical clinic in Enon, Ohio. He devotes at least four days a week to Honor Flight and is the program’s only paid employee. His wife, Clarice, as well as his mother, father, brother, sister and sister-in-law, are among the 15 volunteers who help operate the national network, based in Dayton.

Honor Flight coordinates dozens of flights each year from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, New York, North Dakota (which also represents South Dakota and Minnesota), North Carolina, Ohio and Utah. “We have 30 to 50 applicants per day from veterans as far away as Alaska,” Bailey says.

An unforgettable experience
On an Honor Flight trip, every expense is covered, including meals, ground transportation, and oxygen tanks and motorized wheelchairs for veterans who need them. Volunteers pay for their own tickets, and each flight has a medical attendant.

Natalie Kindt, 34, of Atlanta, volunteered on a flight and it was an experience she’ll never forget. “Now I’ll never pass another veteran without saying thank you,” she says.

Morse steadfastly refuses all offers from veterans who ask if they can help pay their way, which typically costs several hundred dollars. “They’ve done enough already,” he says.

“When we arrived at the airport, we didn’t even have to buy our breakfast,” says Dayton resident Jim Eby, 85, a World War II pilot who took a flight with his brother Harold, 92, also a veteran, this spring. “They gave us a sack of food.”

Before each flight from Dayton, Morse meets departing veterans at the airport, greeting each one personally. When the airplane lands in Baltimore, Md., typically meeting up with Honor Flights from other cities, he assembles the group into waiting chartered buses and heads into nearby Washington, D.C.

At the memorial, located between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, veterans gravitate into the large circular pavilion ringed with elegant columns representing each state. Many are moved to tears. Dozens of other visitors are anxious to meet the veterans, shake their hands and express their thanks.

“A young female sailor came up to me and asked what branch of the military I was in,” says Fern Metcalf, 84, a U.S. Navy WAVES veteran from Troy, Ohio. “When I told her the Navy, she grabbed my arm and asked another sailor to take a picture of us. Then she stayed with me as I walked all around the memorial.”

“Here I am, 84 years old, with a smile I can’t wipe off,” Metcalf adds. “It gives me goose bumps when I think about how special we were made to feel.”

George Cordrey, 85, who fought in the Battle of Iwo Jima, traveled from Cincinnati to Columbus to connect with his Honor Flight trip. “A couple approached me from out of the blue,” he says. “They hugged me and thanked me. I don’t know who they were or where they were from, but we all sobbed. It was so touching.”

“They’ll have a whole day of people coming up to them, shaking their hands, thanking them,” Morse says. “At the end of the day, they’ll have a tremendous understanding of how much this country admires their service and their sacrifice.”

A rejuvenating effect
At the center of the memorial is a pair of gushing, towering fountains —symbols, according to the memorial’s official statement of purpose, “of the moral strength and awesome power that can flow when a free people are united and bonded together in a just cause.” Morse says the torrents of water have a rejuvenating effect on the visiting veterans.

“I call it the fountain of youth,” he says. “There’s a transformation that takes place. They get on the plane in the morning, they’re in their 80s. They get on that evening to come back home, it’s like they’re in their 60s.”

Some 1,500 World War II veterans are on a waiting list of upcoming Honor Flights and Morse vows to keep working until they all get to see the memorial that honors them. And even then, he has no plans to stop.

“Once we get all the World War II vets, we’ll get the Korean vets,” he says. “And then we’ll help the Vietnam vets . . . and the vets of Iraq and Afghanistan, if there’s a memorial for that. This is going to continue.”

“This is the most honorable, noble thing I’ve ever done in my life,” he adds. “It’s so much further-reaching and meaningful than I ever thought it was going to be.”

Marcia Schonberg is a writer in Lexington, Ohio.

 

MSNBC.com - November 10, 2005

Vets visit war memorials for free
Honor Flight takes veterans, limited by money or physical condition, to D.C.
The Associated Press
updated 2:23 p.m. ET, Thurs., Nov. 10, 2005

DAYTON, Ohio - Frostbite damage to his feet during World War II and a limp from a stroke prevented 81-year-old William Taylor from taking a commercial flight or driving to Washington see the nation’s new memorial to veterans of the war. But Taylor managed to get there anyway.

He flew via Honor Flight — a program of free flights for World War II veterans, started by a former Air Force pilot.

Once a month, a caravan of small planes filled with veterans and flown by volunteer pilots makes its way from Springfield to the nation’s capital and returns the same day.

If not for Honor Flight, Taylor probably would have never seen the memorial.

“I just sat there and looked at it. You just couldn’t believe that you were there,” he recalled. “It was really breathtaking.”

The program was set up by 46-year-old Earl Morse of Ohio, who worried that physical or financial limits were keeping World War II veterans from making it to Washington. He saw that many were dying before they got a chance to see the memorial.

 

Pilots use their own planes or sometimes rent them. The program relies entirely on donations, with veterans groups contributing toward some expenses.

Over 200 veterans on waiting list
So far, 132 veterans have flown on the Honor Flights since the program began last spring, and there is a waiting list of 257. The flights have become so popular that Morse quit his job last month to devote himself to the project full-time.

“You get bitten by this, and you can’t think of anything else,” Morse said. “The window itself is good for another five to 10 years. After that, it’s going to be a moot point because they’re all going to be gone. This is their last hurrah.”

Taylor, who got frostbite when he spent six months in a prison camp after being captured during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944-45, thought that being able to walk only short distances would exclude him from flights. But Morse made sure he was on the first flight in May, and even found wooden boxes for him to step on to get in the plane.

“I was overwhelmed,” Taylor said.

Leonard Loy, who enlisted at 17 and served in the Navy in the Mediterranean and at Okinawa in the Pacific during the war, said he was overjoyed when Morse asked him if he wanted to go with him to see the memorial.

“I’m too old to travel, and the other thing is I can’t afford it,” said the 80-year-old Springfield man. “There were tears in my eyes when he asked me.”

He said the memorial was beautiful. “I finally realized that we were finally honored,” he said.

Only 3.5 million of the 16 million Americans who served during World War II are still alive. About 1,000 die each day.

An estimated 7 million people have visited the memorial — a circle of 50 granite pillars flanked by arches around a pool and fountains — since it opened in 2004. Many World War II veterans visit in wheelchairs, or with walkers, canes or crutches.

“We really think they should see that memorial before they pass on,” said George Chekan, national president of the Veterans of the Battle of the Bulge Association. “It’s a must-see.”

A way of thanking veterans
Morse, who was a physician assistant for the Department of Veterans Affairs in Springfield, brought up the Honor Flight idea last January at a meeting of a recreational flying club. In a flash, he had 11 volunteer pilots and planes. The volunteer pilots have come from Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and North Carolina.

“The intent of the flight is to thank them,” said pilot Chris Sullivan, 36, of suburban Beavercreek. “It seems a little weird that they’re so thankful.”

Morse has suspended the flights until April because the cold weather can be a hazard for the small planes and there is less daylight for the flights.

Demand has been so great that Morse began buying seats on jetliners flying out the Dayton airport. He calls those Guardian Honor Flights, since he sends guardians to help the veterans tour the memorial.

© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9992713/

 

Avweb - June 1, 2005 -

Ohio Pilots Give A Lift To World War II Vets...

"Honor Flight" Takes Off

When the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., was dedicated last year, most veterans were already over 75 years old. Some of them were patients at the V.A. hospital in Ohio where Earl Morse works as a physician's assistant, and Morse realized many of the aging vets would never make it to D.C. to see their monument. Some couldn't afford the plane ticket to Washington, or were too infirm to make the 10-hour car ride. So Morse, a retired Air Force captain, came up with a better idea -- he and his fellow pilots from the Wright-Patterson Aero Club would fly them there, in a Bonanza, a Mooney, a Cessna 210, or a Piper Aztec. Those aircraft and four others -- eight pilots and 12 veterans -- made the two-and-a-half-hour flight from Ohio to Washington and back on May 21, the first of what Morse hopes will be many similar trips. In Washington, the vets were treated like heroes, as they took pictures and reminisced at the Memorial and shared a meal with the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post. The cost to the veteran is zero, and although it's a long day -- leaving Springfield at 8 a.m. and returning about 12 hours later -- the traveling is relatively easy on them.

...While Dozens More Wait Their Turn

Morse has christened the effort Honor Flight, and organized support from veterans' groups and local businesses, who chipped in to provide meals and ground transportation for the travelers. The pilots paid the Aero Club rental fees, or flew their own airplanes. "It was the most rewarding thing I've ever done," pilot Ron Smith told AVweb on Tuesday. "When we landed back at Springfield that night, there were 200 people there to greet us, waving flags ... that's when the veterans really got very emotional." Honor Flight already has more than 150 vets on a waiting list to make the trip. And "sadly, time is not on our side," says the group's Web site. Another trip is planned for June 11. "We'll do these trips all summer," Smith said. "As long as we can get pilots to volunteer, we'll do it."

Wright Patterson AFB Skywriter - May 27, 2007

Retiree takes WW II vets to memorial

 

by Mike Wallace Skywrighter Staff
May 27, 2005

Retired Air Force Capt. Earl Morse is a physician assistant working in the Springfield Veterans Affairs clinic. In his work over the past six years, he’s come in contact with many World War II veterans, and he’s wanted to find a way to help them beyond his professional duties. As it turned out, the base Aero Club became integral to the help, and what was known as “Honor Flight” took to the air Saturday.

Capt. Morse holds a private pilot’s license and flies from the Aero Club. He learned that the club purchased a Piper Saratoga he described “ample room for passengers to fly to Washington.”

A few months ago, he had a conversation with his father, Earl Morse, a retired Air Force staff sergeant, and Vietnam veteran. The idea was formed there.

“I said we’ll fly to Washington and see the Vietnam Memorial and the National World War II memorial,” Capt. Morse said.

As an afterthought he thought about taking a World War II veteran along. He discovered, however, that he wasn’t allowed to transport patients unless, according to VA rules, the trips were sponsored by a third party, such as a service organization.

The cost of renting a plane was between $500 and $700, and Capt. Morse said he couldn’t see any Veterans of Foreign Wars post coming up with the funds. Then, he recalled, a VA official told him to have the service organization sponsor the trip administratively, and it could then write off the expenses for tax purposes.

While these arrangements were being made, Capt. Morse thought it would be important to find out whether any World War II veterans might be interested in such a trip.

“Tom Brokaw (television news personality and author) called World War II veterans, the ‘Greatest Generation,’ and they are,” said Capt. Morse. “They grew up during the Depression, and they are so appreciative, so patriotic. As a group, they didn’t demand a memorial. They’re not demanding, insisting people. World War II veterans are stoic, but they are appreciative of anything you do for them.”

Capt. Morse said many of the veterans he’s worked with have been completely wiped out financially due to health reasons. Nation-wide, they’re dying at the rate of 1,020 per day.

There was urgency in getting the veterans to the memorial. Capt. Morse said that few World War II veterans could make a trip of that distance by bus, and he wasn’t completely sure that many would be interested in a few hours’ trip by small aircraft.

“I asked a World War II veteran I knew if he had any plans to visit the memorial, and he told me ‘no’. I asked if he’d ever flown in a small airplane, and he said ‘no.’ I asked, ‘How about if I flew you to Washington to see the memorial?’

“I was prepared for answers such as, ‘I’ll have to check with my wife,’ or something like that, but I wasn’t ready for him to start crying.”

Capt. Morse said some nurses at the clinic asked another veteran, and got a similar response. He said it was then he realized he had to come up with an application of some kind, so he devised a questionnaire to determine the physical abilities of the veterans and the medications they were on.

The questionnaire asked if the applicant had motion sickness or breathing problems; did they use canes, walkers, crutches, or wheelchairs; were they capable of walking the length of a football field; how much did they weigh; and what medications did they take.

Capt. Morse said that one of the men noticed the question about walking, and for three weeks worked to make the distance, but wasn’t able to do it. Capt. Morse said they’d find a way for him to go, and did.

On the Honor Flight, eight aircraft carried 16 pilots and 12 World War II veterans to Washington D.C. Capt. Morse said.

“The World War II memorial is big, it dwarfs the Washington Monument and the Vietnam Memorial, but it was built with disabled veterans in mind,” said Capt. Morse. “It was dedicated last year, but I’ve only talked with one veteran who was bitter about the delay.”

The National World War II Memorial, dedicated on May 29, 2004, honors the 16 million Americans who served in World War II and the more than 400, 000 who died. The veterans and pilots on the initial flight spent several hours at the memorial, and some were very emotional. One pilot, Paul Sharp, said that he and some veterans spent many minutes crying.

Capt. Morse and the other pilots are planning more trips, perhaps once a month, to give World War II veterans the chance to see the memorial. He summed up his feelings by quoting a bumper sticker that said, “If you can read this, thank a teacher. If you can read this in English, thank a veteran.”