Dave Goode and Official Guardian Tim Goode took part in the Honor Flight to honor all Military Veterans. This one day blitzkrieg took place on Sep 17, 2016.
It was a long day. Up at 5am and over to an auxiliary hangar at the airport. A charter plane was waiting. The hanger was full of Veterans, their assistants, various military personnel, speakers making speeches, a choir singing military songs. The plane eventually loaded. It takes a long time. Lots of wheelchairs. A ninety minute flight to DC.
A long line of greeters awaited us all at Ronald Reagan airport. “Thank you for your service” was the mantra of the day. Four charter buses whisked us off to the WWII Memorial, headed by two Park Service police on motorcycles that literally stopped (massive) traffic wherever we went. Our buses never stopped.
Dave is quite nimble, even at 91, but he allowed himself the luxury of a wheelchair at some of our stops. We didn’t know how taxing the day would be.
Next was lunch on the bus while we drove all over, seeing DC sights. Our police escorts really got a workout. Those guys love their job, racing back and forth, screaming into intersections and just totally making hash out of already terrible traffic.
Then, the Korean Memorial, the Mall, Lincoln Memorial, and the Viet Nam Memorial, all in one stop.
Arlington, to see the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb, the Marine Memorial, and lastly, the Air Force Memorial. Then it was back to the plane. The Vets were in for a surprise then – Mail Call. Family and friends wrote the individual vets in secret, and the mail was passed out on the plane. Many thanks for those letters.
We figured we were done when we taxi’d to our hangar in La Crosse. But no! The hangar was FULL of people. A 100 person band awaited. Fireworks, more speeches, lots of military personnel, and everyone’s families, including our own Nancy and Eileen. Dad and I were just about first off the plane, everyone waiting was in a frenzy. We walked a gauntlet.
Click the picture for a gallery of the day’s events. Dave Goode is wearing a blue hat.
