WWII vets get a chance to see appreciation set in stone

[David]

USA TODAY


WASHINGTON — In many ways, it was just another Northwest flight arriving from Detroit at Reagan National Airport.
That was until its passengers started getting off. Flight 234 carried three dozen veterans of World War II.

Volunteers waved American flags and applause broke out in the gate area as the 36 vets slowly came into the terminal, some waving, some saluting, some obviously startled by the reception. More than a few tears were shed by both the vets and their greeters.

The vets, now in their 80s and 90s, were guests of Honor Flight Network (honorflight.org), whose mission is to bring 12,000 World War II vets to Washington, D.C., this summer. That's double the number last year. Some 6,000 vets have already applied for the trip.

The ultimate goal is to have every World War II vet visit the World War II memorial on the National Mall. Time is working against them. An estimated 1,200 World War II vets die every day, according to Honor Flight officials.

Arthur Kaczmarek, 88, of Beverly Hills, Mich., couldn't have been happier to make the trip on a Saturday morning this spring, and in his original Army uniform no less. He saluted the crowd as he came down the ramp and into the gate area. "This is just a fantastic thing they've done for us," said Kaczmarek, who is also returning to Germany this month to retrace the tracks he made during the war.

The Honor Flight program was conceived by Earl Morse, a physician assistant, pilot and retired Air Force captain, to honor the veterans he had taken care of for 27 years.

After retiring in 1998, Morse was hired by the Department of Veterans Affairs to work in a clinic in Springfield, Ohio. He quickly realized most World War II vets would never visit the memorial that was completed in 2004. He set out to change that with free trips paid for by public contributions.

He was at the memorial with an Honor Flight group from Ohio the Saturday the Michigan vets also visited.

"Our goal is every World War II vet get to see this memorial," Morse said, "because it's theirs, not ours."

Not that these trips don't come with challenges. More than half of the Michigan vets were in wheelchairs, some were on oxygen, and many couldn't hear well.

"Talk louder!" one veteran yelled to the guide as she spoke on the bus en route to the memorial. "Can't hear you!"

And when offered water, some veterans asked for something else, much to the amusement of their comrades.

"I'll take a Manhattan!" one shouted.

"I want Scotch with my water," another yelled.

Cathy Zimmerman of Royal Oak, Mich., has seen and heard all this before and just chuckles. This was her eighth Honor Flight trip as a volunteer, and she lovingly likened the outings to field trips with kindergartners.

"My dad was a World War II vet," she said. "I'm doing this for him."

Scott Williams, a member of the Sons of the American Legion, was greeting the vets at the memorial. "Welcome to Washington, sir," he said to each one as he slowly got off the bus. "Thank you for your service."

"For me it's just a chance to give something back to our vets," he said. "We can't possibly pay back the debt."

Once onto the memorial's plaza, the veterans reacted to what they saw.

Howard Webb, 85, a Marine from Sylvan Lake, Mich., said he was "overwhelmed. It's hard to take it all in at one time."

Three of the Michigan veterans live in the same assisted-living facility in Grosse Point Woods. One of them, Art Johnson, 80, was a Navy medical officer for five years, four of them on the USS Pickaway, APA, 222, which served in the Pacific.

"What's interesting to me is that people just jump out of the crowd to thank us," he said.

Bill Hansen, 85, of Grosse Point Park was in the first wave of the D-Day invasion in France and has five battle scars and a Bronze Star Medal to prove it. He called the memorial "beautiful, just beautiful."

Also among the Michigan group was a set of twins, Malcolm and Melvin Muszynski, 83, who were wounded on the same day — Feb. 7, 1945.

Both received Purple Hearts, but neither talked about his wounds for 50 years. It was only recently that they realized they were wounded on the same day.

They couldn't have been happier with their day in Washington. "I can't say enough about the way we've been treated," said Malcolm, a retired firefighter from River Rouge, Mich. "It's been out of this world."

And although the group was heading back to Michigan later in the day, he took the quick trip in stride.

"We had longer days than this back in the war," Malcolm said. "This is a picnic. Believe me."