Guests of honor - High Point veterans join flight to see war memorials
HIGH POINT — When the veterans aboard the Triad Honor Flight returned from Washington, D.C., on Wednesday evening, they were greeted with thunder and lightning.
First came the lightning, a spring storm that temporarily delayed the celebration awaiting them inside Greensboro's Piedmont Triad International Airport. After about an hour's delay, the vets finally were able to get off the plane and enter the concourse ... and then came the thunder.
'It was unbelievable,' Randall May, a 78-year-old U.S. Army veteran from High Point, said of the thunderous welcome he and his fellow veterans were given by a thousand or more cheering, flag-waving supporters who came out to show their appreciation for the veterans. 'It was kind of a surreal experience, like a dream was coming true. It was chilling.'
Bennie Taylor, an 86-year-old Air Force veteran from High Point, agreed.
'Oh my gosh, it was overwhelming,' said Taylor, who served in the Air Force from 1957 to 1961. 'We thought everybody would be gone home by the time the lightning ended, but that airport was lined up with hundreds and hundreds of people.'
The crowd ranged from friends and family members to complete strangers, from Highland bagpipers to uniformed Boy Scouts. As the veterans paraded along the concourse, the crowd serenaded them with chants of 'USA! USA!' and 'Freedom Isn't Free!'
May, who served in the Army during the Vietnam War era, contrasted the welcome to the disrespectful treatment he witnessed as he walked through airports in his service uniform more than 50 years ago.
'When I and many others were discharged back in the '70s, there was no celebration,' May recalls. 'When you went through an airport, people would call you baby-killers, and some of them would even spit on you, but we were just trying to serve our country.'
May and Taylor were among more than a hundred veterans — both men and women — who participated in Wednesday's Triad Honor Flight. They were flown free of charge to Washington, D.C., to visit the nation's memorials honoring the service and sacrifice of America's veterans.
Stops included the World War II Memorial, the Korean War Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial — including The Wall and the 'Three Servicemen' sculpture — the Air Force Memorial and the Marine Corps War Memorial, featuring a sculpture of the iconic flag-raising at Iwo Jima. The veterans also visited Arlington National Cemetery and witnessed the impressive 'Changing of the Guard' ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
'We were all just in awe of the 'Changing of the Guard,' but then to see all those tombstones at Arlington — what our ancestors had done to bring us the freedom of liberty that we have — had an impact on me, too,' said May.
When May visited the 'Three Servicemen' sculpture at the Vietnam Memorial, he couldn't help but think about the soldiers he'd seen as an operating room specialist at Brooke Army Hospital in San Antonio, Texas, a burn treatment center for napalm patients flown directly there from southeast Asia.
'Seeing those three guys in the sculpture, and then knowing what happened to those guys I saw at Brooke, that really hit me,' he said.
For Taylor, a special part of the day was having his son, Michael, fly in from his home in Las Vegas, Nevada, to serve as his dad's guardian. Each Triad Honor Flight veteran is assigned a guardian, a volunteer who stays with the veteran throughout the day and takes care of anything he or she needs.
'The whole day, that was one of the most emotional things I've ever been involved in, especially having my son there with me,' Taylor said. 'It was all just overwhelming and emotional — it was a great day.'
Triad Honor Flight officials say there will be another flight later this year. For more information, visit triadhonorflight.org.
Jtomlin@hpenews.com | 336-888-3579
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