A trip to Washington D.C. is awaiting the veterans who showed up at the Evansville Catholic Diocese on Saturday. The nonprofit Honor Flight held interviews for the participants in the organization’s 14th trip to the nation’s capitol.
Some veterans have never had the chance to see the memorials dedicated to the fallen soldiers they served side-by-side with. Honor flight’s mission is to change that.
John Weber, an Air Force veteran who served in the Vietnam war, told 44News ”a friend of mine, who also was Air Force, went on this, and he thought it was the greatest thing ever and told me I needed to come.”
John Weber was one of the dozens of veterans to interview for Honor Flight today. For the 14th flight, they plan to send 85 veterans.
”I served in Vietnam, and at the time, that wasn’t very popular with everyone," Weber said. "It’s great to realize that people appreciate your service and what you did.”
Honor Flight also has the goal of bringing local veterans together, sometimes resulting in surprising connections. Sharron Lawrence, vice president of Honor Flight, said ”at the meet-and-greet, which is a couple days before the actual flight, they meet all the other veterans, and we have had a few that realized that “oh, we served together.” that’s really kind of neat when you find out stories like that.”
The next Honor Flight will depart from Evansville on April 22. There have been thirteen flights since 2014, taking nearly one-thousand veterans to the nation’s capitol.
