Sunday, October 3, 2010

“Veterans will see their monument”

“Veterans will see their monument”

Veterans will see their monument

Posted: 25 Sep 2010 08:46 PM PDT

RALEIGH -- For a couple of dollars - the cost of parking for an hour in the main deck at RDU - it will be possible to see 100 American heroes in one place on Oct. 7.

That's the day of Triangle Flight of Honor's inaugural trip, when volunteers will take 100 local World War II veterans to Washington to see the memorial built in their honor.

To wrap up the trip, the group is planning the homecoming celebration that many service members never got when they quietly returned from war 65 or more years ago.

The public is invited to attend the homecoming, which will begin about 7:30 p.m. in the atrium of the Raleigh-Durham International Airport's central parking deck, and last for about an hour. The veterans' plane is due about 8 p.m.

"You will get the hero's welcome that you have long deserved," Sunny Johnson, one of the event organizers, promised the group of former soldiers, sailors and Marines at a meeting Saturday at a church in North Raleigh.

Volunteer escorts who will accompany the veterans on the trip were coached in the morning on what they'll need to do to help get the group onto the chartered plane and around Washington on tour buses. The plan is to head to the World War II memorial and other monuments.

Logistics are complicated by the veterans' ages; the youngest are in their mid-80s. Some are in wheelchairs, many rely on walkers or canes, others have trouble remembering things.

"You will be their family for the day," Johnson told the volunteers, who will serve as "guardians."

Three trips funded

Since its inception in March as a local chapter of a national movement to make sure all World War II vets who want to see the memorial get there, Triangle Honor Flight has raised enough money for three trips, Johnson said Saturday. It will take at least that many.

The group has enough volunteers to run five trips, Johnson said.

George Shaw is looking forward to this one. He's 84, and the last time he was in Washington was more than 70 years ago. That's before he went into the Navy, where he served as a yeoman on the USS Mission Bay, an aircraft carrier out of Norfolk, Va.

"I'll get to meet a lot of veterans," he said, "and make a lot of memories."

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