More thoughts on the Honor Flight:

I mentioned in the previous blog post Shawn Rocco's photos in our photo gallery about yesterday's flight.  Photographer Travis Long was at RDU to shoot pictures of the vets returning from D.C.  You can see his pictures in the gallery now, after Shawn's.  It was a pretty amazing scene at the airport when the veterans came in, as Travis described it to me.

After the plane landed, the veterans got off and they were escorted from the terminal through an atrium to the parking deck.  They were preceded by a bagpiper, who met them at the USAirways gate (the airline provided the flight).  They were led through the airport by an honor guard made up of Marines and NC National Guard.  I wish I had been there to see that.

When the vets got to the front of Terminal 1 and emerged into view in the parking garage atrium, the crowd of famly and friends and well-wishers (around 500 by Travis' estimate) erupted into cheers.  The National Guard band played. There were veterans from other wars, and Cub Scouts. You can see in Travis' photos the crowd lining the people-mover (which the airport had thoughtfully shut down to make for a steadier walkway for the elderly vets), waving American flags and holding ballons, shaking hands with the veterans.

"It was pretty cool, actually," said Travis.

Mindy Hamlin, the airport's spokeswoman, told me that one veteran was so taken with the reception, he said, "This is better than winning the lottery."

I recommend that you check out Shawn Rocco's photo gallery on today's Honor Flight of local vets to DC to see the World War II Memorial.  My favorite is the one shown here of Raymond Sugg being hugged by a TSA agent at RDU before the flight left for Washington.

I relate to this because the photo of Sugg reminded me of my late father, who I wish I had taken to the memorial. My father was a World War II veteran.  He enlisted out of the University of New Hampshire in 1942 when he was 18, then spent the next three years with a mobile unit in China, Burma and India, intercepting Japanese radio transmissions. 

I grew up watching Hollywood actors in their 30's fighting celluloid Germans and Japanese in movies. The reality is that the many of the soldiers were teenagers like my dad who wanted nothing more than to finish the job and get the heck home to high school sweethearts like my mom.

It is terrific that organizations like Triangle Flight of Honor are giving World War II veterans this big thank-you, and showing them that 65-plus years later, their service has not been forgotten.