Jerry Lujan
Honor Flight No. 21 departed Tucson on May 21 and returned on May 23. Julian “Gute” Gutierrez and I were there to meet and greet the 24 veterans who flew to Washington D.C. to see their memorials. The flight honored five WWII and 19 Korean veterans. The military services represented were Army – 14; Navy – 4; Marine Corps 3; Air Force – 1; Coast Guard – 1 and Navy Air Corps – 1. Two women were included. One veteran served in WWII, Korea and Vietnam and one served in Korea and Vietnam.
All Honor Flights are special but this one was a little more special than usual because each veteran was accompanied by a Guardian – a student at the University of Arizona – and if that wasn’t special enough, each Guardian was also a veteran!
Learn how the Honor Flight program got started. Go to: www.honorflight.org. The story is quite interesting in how it had its small start and grew into the nation-wide program honoring our military veterans.