Honor Flight

Well this is the long awaited "guest" posting by the one and only Lucas Siron.  Tori figured it'd be easiest to blog about my Honor Flight experience if it came straight from the horse's mouth.  Two weeks ago I was very privileged to have the opportunity to accompany my grandpa Dean Blimling, Grandpa B, on a trip to Washington D.C. with a group of WWII veterans through the Honor Flight organization.

Honor Flight is a national organization that has the sole purpose of providing the opportunity for every WWII veteran who is physically able to, to visit the WWII monument in Washington D.C.  The national WWII Memorial was built and dedicated in 2004 almost 60 years after the official end to WWII.  At that time many of the 16+ million veterans were already deceased or unable to ever see the monument in their honor.  Since the Honor Flight organization started they have provided the chance for 60,000+ veterans from 71 different hubs from all over the United States.  The hub we flew with was the Land of Lincoln Honor Flight hub based out of Springfield, which alone has flown more than 1,000 veterans to D.C. to see the monument.  We were on the 13th flight for this hub along with 82 other veterans and their "guardians".  Our 82 veterans covered all branches including the Army, Army Air Corps (Air Force), Marine Corps, Navy, Coast Guard, and Merchant Marines.

This is all of us waiting to go through security.  Each of the veterans was in a blue shirt and the guardians were in green.  The shirts were colored to keep track of everybody through out the day.  Each veteran has a guardian who's sole job is to make sure they enjoy their day.  Our duty was to help the veteran in any way we could and also to help them get around.  A lot of veterans had family members as their guardians, like me with my Grandpa.  The organization also has many people who volunteer to just help as guardians and they have no connection to their veterans before their trip although I'm sure they do after the trip.

Here is my Grandpa waiting in line.  Unfortunately he wasn't feeling too well when he got up that morning but he was so excited to go there wasn't going to be anything to stop him.  As a little background on my Grandpa he is a Navy veteran and was stationed in the Pacific from 1944 to 1945.  He was on LST or Landing Ship Tank, which were troop and supply carriers that could land in shallow waters.  As my Grandpa put it if we had to invade Japan his fleet and his ship would have been the front line of that invasion.  When he arrived near Japan their ship was awaiting orders when the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.

When we got into D.C. the firefighters at Reagan National Airport rolled out their crash trucks and gave us a water cannon salute.  This is the best picture I could get but there was also another truck on the other side.  The salute was the first of many wonderful greetings we would get from the second we touched down in D.C.

Here we are ready to get going and see the sights!

Coming off the plane we were greeted at the gate by members of the local Honor Flight organization who has a welcome crew.  Many of the Honor Flight volunteers are themselves veterans, many from Vietnam.  They greet every flight coming in.  Our flight was one of three flights from different hubs that day but the only one from Illinois.  After we walked away from the gate we were greeted by the West Point Alumni Glee Club.  These gentlemen were singing many patriotic tunes as well as the various hymms of each of the branches of the armed forces.  

We were able to stand for awhile and watch them sing for us as we waited for our buses.  Here are some of the members of our group watching them sing.

This is just a quick shot I took of the front of the airport, as if I needed more proof as to where we were. As many times as I've flown in and out of this airport I've never really payed that much attention to the front of the building and I thought it had a pretty neat look.

Here we all our on our buses.  Everybody was divided into three bus groups, the Red, White, and Blue buses.  We were on the Red bus and had a great bus captain Joan who was a wealth of knowledge on all of the sites we visited.

First stop was the WWII Memorial.  This memorial, for anyone who hasn't been to D.C., is right on the National Mall between the Lincoln and Washington Monuments.  It's a pretty good size memorial and does a lot to pay tribute to all the men and women who served in the military both at home and abroad.  The memorial also does wonderful job of honoring those not in the military that supported the troops in other ways.  The memorial is divided into a Pacific and Atlantic side which made up the two major fronts of the war.  This is my grandpa in front of the Pacific side of the memorial.

There was an eight grade class from Lake Park, IL that was also visiting the memorial on the same day.  They had heard from another Honor Flight group that a group from Illinois was coming so they had waited at the memorial to greet us.  Each of the kids lined up and shook the veterans' hands and thanked them for their service.  This was a beautiful welcome to the memorial and something that we saw everywhere we went throughout the day.

Here is our group of veterans getting lined up for a group picture a the front of the WWII Memorial with the Washington Monument centered in the back.  My Grandpa made himself easier to find by wearing yellow measuring tape suspenders.  These suspenders are almost a trade mark of my Grandpa's and something I've seen him wear for years.  Everywhere we went he got compliments on them and his response was always "I'm just trying to measure up!" with a wink and a chuckle.

Another picture of our group.  It was hard for me to get a good picture of the entire group so this is just a small portion of the entire group.

After the picture Ray, who was another bus captain and main organizer for the trip, read off the names that people on our group had provided to name-off and honor.  He read all the names and then we held a moment of silence to honor those that were no longer with us or unable to come on the trip.  As a side note about Ray the amount of work that he and the other main people for the Land of Lincoln Honor Flight hub do is astounding! They put hours upon hours of their own volunteer time behind the organization of each of these flights and my Grandpa and I could not thank them enough.

Another main aspect of the WWII Memorial is the state columns that represent the states and U.S. territories that veterans of WWII came from.  This is my Grandpa by the Illinois column as he was born and raised in Illinois.

Alright I know that was pretty long winded but there's more to come.  This is part 1 of 3 about my Grandpa and I's trip.  Too much to talk about in just 1 post!