Service & Sacrifice: Utah Honor Flight

STILL FLYIN' HIGH

COMMITMENT TO SERVICE MEANS FULL HEARTS FOR UTAH HONOR FLIGHT VOLUNTEERS

by David Cordero

for valor magazine

Months of paperwork, phone calls and training all come down to a couple hours one morning — often before the crack of dawn. Make no mistake, these hours are filled with excitement. Yet they are also filled with anxiety as you hope every detail you’ve spent months arranging falls into place.

You are about to escort 50 aging military veterans approximately 3,000 miles across the country. The experience of a lifetime awaits.

Since October 2013, Utah Honor Flight has been ferrying veterans of World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War to Washington D.C. to see their memorials. So far, the non-profit organization has escorted approximately 1,800 veterans to our nation’s capital.

One marvels at Utah Honor Flight’s accomplishments given that, aside from a part-time office worker, the flights are volunteer run. Over the course of several years I was one of those volunteers. The feeling of gratitude you experience from so many angles is exhilarating. It gets into your blood.

SIGNIFICANT SACRIFICE

Although I have stepped away from the program to spend more time with my family, I recently caught up with my friends who still organize and execute Utah Honor Flights. Some have planned more than a dozen trips. What follows is a glimpse of what stirs the hearts of these UHF volunteers — and what keeps them coming back for more.

I started with current UHF Chair Stephanie Harmon. Her first trip, in 2014, was a family affair. She served as guardian for her grandmother, while two of her cousins were guardians for family members. Harmon’s mother, Judy Lemmons, was one of the flight leaders.

“I was able to hear firsthand experiences from these amazing veterans and I realized how blessed we all are,” Harmon says. “I listened to a World War II veteran tell me about his twin brother being killed at Iwo Jima, about how he found his brother’s body and carried him to wash him, bury him and return to fighting. He was 19.”

Longtime board member Celeste Sorensen took her first UHF trip in 2014 when her father Glade Sorensen, a Korean War veteran, was selected. Though he picked his son to be his guardian and only one family member is allowed per veteran, Celeste was undeterred. A nurse by trade, she was selected to participate as the flight medic.

“It had an amazing healing effect on my father,” Celeste recalls. “I wanted to help other Utah veterans have that same opportunity.”

John Pierce is a board member who has made nine trips; his first experience was as a flight leader. An employee at Nucor, Pierce helped raise $48,000 for a trip out of Box Elder County. “For me it was about giving back to the veterans that paved the way so that my service was less difficult,” says Pierce, a Navy veteran. “Hearing their stories and realizing what they had to endure brings tears to my eyes.”

Randi McKay often serves as a flight medic during trips. In 2019, she was part of an all-female flight that included 23 Vietnam veterans. As she stood next to the Vietnam Women’s Memorial, she shared a poignant moment with a nurse. “She explained to me the pain in the women’s eyes in the statue,” says McKay, a UHF board member. “I understood what she had gone through to a certain degree as I am an EMT. It was so healing for us to have someone to talk to who understands how it feels knowing that (the person they are caring for is) going to die.”

photos courtesy of david cordero

MIRACULOUS MOMENTS

My first UHF trip came as a volunteer guardian for a WWII veteran from St. George. I wrote two articles for the local newspaper and the community’s response was overwhelming. The interest allowed me to help build awareness for the program by attending the next three flights as a reporter. When I left my newspaper job, I was asked to be a flight leader and was eventually appointed to the UHF Board.

It was a tremendous opportunity. It also required significant personal sacrifice. You relinquish family time, pay less attention to individual pursuits and sacrifice sleep due to all that requires attention. Look, these trips aren’t as detailed as the Normandy invasion. But charging headlong into our nation’s capital with 100 or more people — many of them in their 70s, 80s and even late 90s — is an exercise in diligence and resilience.

Not everything goes according to plan. Once, the ground transportation was incorrectly booked. Not only were the buses smaller than usual — requiring a third bus to be rented — but they lacked space below to stow wheelchairs for the veterans. So in addition to needing three buses, we had to rent a U-Haul. For good measure, a chase car was added to make it a five-vehicle convoy.

The setup caused frustrations. It also had its advantages. It allowed us to grant a veteran’s request to see his brother’s grave (KIA in Korea) at Arlington National Cemetery. This is almost never possible during a trip, but because a car was available we were able to make a WWII veteran’s dream come true. We called it a Utah Honor Flight miracle.

HONORING HEROES

Learn more about the Utah Honor Flight organization, visit

utahhonorflight.org

Although UHF has transitioned its focus from World War II and Korean War veterans to Vietnam War veterans, urgency remains. Time waits for no one. Particularly frustrating to Harmon was UHF had to postpone all spring flights this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They hope to resume in the fall.

“The hardest part is the wait,” Harmon says. “I wish we had the time and funds to fly everyone at once so they all could be honored.”

Soon, these UHF volunteers hope, their schedules will get busy. Soon, their nights and weekends will be filled with paperwork, phone calls and training. Soon, the logistics will be a challenge. They always are.

That won’t matter when the jet is in the air and en route to Washington D.C. The flight leaders will watch years melt from these aging warriors as they are greeted by strangers who recognize there are still heroes among us.

David Cordero has been a professional writer for more than 15 years. He has won awards on a variety of subjects, including sports, education and military matters. Among his volunteer endeavors he edits American Legion Post 90 newsletter.