Published: November 11, 2008 09:33 am      

The history of the flights

Over the past four years, World War II veterans from around the country have been visiting the National Mall that honors the 16 million who served and the 400,000 who sacrificed their lives more than 63 years ago.

Making sure these vets get to see the National World War II Memorial is Honor Flight founder Earl Morse, a retired Air Force physician’s assistant who provides care to the aging heroes in a small Veterans Administration clinic in Springfield, Ohio.

“It turned out none of my 300 patients had been to the memorial, and worse yet, reality set in that they would probably never see America’s thank you for their service since many were in their 80s and lacked the physical and mental capability to complete a trip on their own,” Morse said. “Many are wheelchair-bound or on oxygen.”

Morse gathered together a few pilots out of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Springfield and recruited them to fly World War II veterans in Piper Cubs and Cessnas to Washington for a day trip. The veteran would not pay a cent so the pilot would be responsible for the $600 to $800 aircraft rental and be with them all day to attend their personal needs.

Then as the program mushroomed and more vets found out about the trip to see the memorial, Honor Flight started looking at commercial aircraft. That later expanded to include charter flights.

“Jeff Miller out of Henderson, N.C., has chartered six jets and taught other people how to charter jets and now Honor Flight is combined with Honor Air to form the Honor Flight Network,” said Morse. “Today, we’re in 34 states with more than 75 hubs across the nation (including Honor Flight of the Quad-Cities) and we’ve flown in more than 15,000 since our beginning in 2005.”