Honor Flight Columbus 9/7/2013:
Good friends are like pure gold and Bill Marland quickly became a golden friend to me. I had attended Xenos Cafe’ Church Teaching alone, that is without Jeanie, many times before my bride began attending with me about a year ago. It was about that time that Bill asked if I had heard of Honor Flight or had been in the service. I told him I was a Korean vet, who had spent my post-training service time in Tokyo, Japan with a map-making battalion. Bill had me sign up for an Honor Flight. Yesterday the time came and I joined eighty-one other Korean veterans and one or two from the WW II "Greatest Generation" along with at least that many Guardians who guide the vets through the Veteran sites in Washington D.C. We saw many other vets from an additional 8 or 9 flights from all over America, according to the Bill Herbert, the guardian assigned to my new vet acquaintance, Al Lundquist, and me.. It was extremely emotional and moving to each of the vets.
Many friends my age, in their late seventies and early eighties were among the grateful vets for the caring Honor Flight organization's truly generous and gratuitous venture. God blessed us with a beautiful flight crew and an extremely beautiful day. After passing through lines of Annapolis Naval students with many thanks fron the young people, there were three buses at the Baltimore Airport to take us to D.C. , a little over thirty miles southeast. Julie Brightwell, was our bus guide in her thirty-second Honor Flight trip from Columbus. She gave historical significant points to us as we saw the sites.
We stopped first at the WW II Memorial which the guide and videos told us had required quite a tussel with Congressman to get the planning and location at the foot of the ponds, east of Lincoln's Memorial. To me, It was the highlight of the beautiful Memorials we saw.
We also saw Memorials:
WW I
Arlington National Cemetery
Women’s Memorial
Changing of the Guard- Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
Viet Nam
Korea
Air Force
Iwo Jima
At the Korea Memorial I was experiencing that the more than life-size statues with rifles and ponchos appeared white and ghostly. Also the photos of soldiers in the granite wall faded which made it appear ghostly as well. It was there, that I looked down at my wheel-chaired-for- the -walking, good friend, Lyle Shover’s dropped head, and he said: “I don’t Like it.” Lyle had experienced battles in Korea. “He also said: It isn’t authentic. In my fourteen months there, we never wore a poncho. It just wasn’t my experience.”
Each of these wonderful Memorials brought about a somber feeling by me and most veterans. I, personally, felt undeserving of a hero’s honor. Yet I have the deep respect for our fallen honored in our nation’s capitol. Surely, we have spent our lifetime back home with family, career, and friends.
Perhaps the Wounded Wariors whose lives were so dramatically altered in all wars, should have their own Memorials. I believe that perhaps a portion of future trips might also include a member or two of each family who lost a vital member or had a member’s life so dramatically changed by war. Those families lived on, as we have, because of their great sacrifices of their loved ones for our free country.
Thanks for all who brought us such a beautiful and caring day, even for vets like me who suffered only separation from loved ones during our mostly very young lives. The adoring gauntlets and the wonderful Honor Flight Gaurdians gave us a chance to share a reverence for all service people of all times.
We share some reverence for those 535 members in D.C. who truly serve the people of America, although with a growing feeling that they have lost much respect for the American heroes. My advice to them: Don’t pretend to serve. Do as these fallen and wounded did- i.e.- SERVE! We don’t appreciate self-serving rock stars as our elected representatives. I love positives for America. These Memorials SERVE! Each of us vets must have heard the words “Thanks for your service” at least a thousand times from great American volunteers who greeted us so smilingly and consistently along the way. Another outstanding greeting crowd met us at the Columbus Airport which overwhelmingly to us, included memnbers of TBDBITL Ohio State's Marching Band, Bagpipes, and so many cheering and terrific people, most of all, members of our families.
Thanks good friend, Bill Marland, who unfortunately could not join me due to a knee operation which cancelled his guardianship for me on the flight.
Thanks also to the great people of Honor flight and all of those who support them. I remain still feeling undeserving for my so relatively small part in the service of America.
Sam Kegley
