Veterans visit D.C. ahead of Memorial Day with Honor Flight Tri-State

On Wednesday, 88 military veterans flew from Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport to Washington D.C. for a whirlwind tour of monuments and memorials put on by Honor Flight Tri-State.

But the tour is just part of it. The nonprofit, with its 18 years of experience, has made it so the typical hassles of travel disappear and the vets can focus on connecting with each other and the public. Director Cheryl Popp has led 87 flights herself.

More: Cheryl Popp ‘lives the mission of Honor Flight Tri-State,’ says volunteer

They shared laughs and tears and a raucous homecoming that many of them missed the first time they returned from overseas.

Honor Flight Tri-State started in 2006. Over the years, their flights and buses have gone from being filled with World War II veterans to nearly all Vietnam- and Cold War-era veterans. Even those who served during the Korean War are seldom seen these days.

The organization tries to accommodate everyone with the smoothest trip possible. The normal security checks are bypassed, there are always enough wheelchairs and there’s a team of volunteer medics that accompany every trip. In D.C., the buses even get the occasional police escort.

As one volunteer said, the military is a lot of hurry-up-and-wait, so on these trips, they’ve removed as much waiting as possible.

It’s made possible with an army of volunteers and hundreds of thousands of dollars of donations.

“We will leave no one behind,” the organization states.

Honor Flight Tri-State is doing four trips a year. The trips cost veterans nothing. They just have to apply online. Any veteran 65 or older is eligible whether they served overseas or stateside.

Here are some of their stories.

Reynolds Robertson

Reynolds Robertson, a Clermont County Air Force veteran, touches the flag as he passes underneath it with his daughter Amandalouise Robertson.

The flag send-off has become a tradition for Honor Flight Tri-State.

Robertson said his family has over 300 years of military service dating back at least three generations. On Memorial Day, he’ll be cleaning up five small cemeteries around Clermont County with other Disabled American Veterans members.

Terry Reid

Terry Reid is a Marine who served in Vietnam.

He was enlisted from 1963 to 1967 and served in a mortar infantry battalion there.

After he returned home, he was in the Reserves for over 22 years, worked as a police officer at the University of Cincinnati for 31 years and worked another 11 years at Hughes High School.

His daughter, Karla Tolbert also served in the Army Reserves. “I just feel my patriotism has grown 100%,” Tolbert said of the trip.

David Barry

David Barry visited the Arlington National Cemetery’s Memorial Amphitheater in Washington, D.C., traveling with other veterans and his daughter, Sonya Williams, on the honor flight from Ohio.

Barry served in the Marines from 1966 to 1970. He was wounded twice in Vietnam and had to be taken to Japan on a medevac helicopter.

“This is the welcome home,” Barry said of the trip.

“When I came back from Vietnam there wasn’t anybody there. A lot of vets didn’t even say they were in Vietnam back in the day.”

Paul Dargis

Paul Dargis calls people “man” and sometimes “dude.”

He is an Army veteran who spent his service from 1968 to 1972 in Key West and Germany. His brother was a Vietnam vet “who didn’t talk about it,” Paul said.

He said his time was “like heaven” with real food, a bowling alley and even a bar.

Dargis said he hesitated to go on the honor flight and felt guilty because his service was relatively easy, but his brother reassured, saying, “You served. You served.”

Russel Abney

Russel Abney is a Navy veteran. He was on the USS Belknap, a guided missile frigate, during the Vietnam War cruising the Tonkin Gulf and coordinating strike groups.

“The hardest thing to do was to keep the pilots from trying to run down the MIG-15s,” he laughed. “They would come out and they’d tease and they’d get them to chase them back, but that was nothing more than a trap.”

He said the attitudes toward the military have changed so much in 50 years.

“If you wore a uniform back then, they just assumed you were over there killing people who should have been killed,” he said.

“Today, it’s so much different. I can go to Kroger and people will come up to me say, ‘Thank you for your service.’”

Randall Roth

Air Force veteran Randall Roth enlisted in 1966, about 24 years before Air Force Master Sgt. Tiffany Davis, a soldier also visiting the U.S. Air Force Memorial in Washington, D.C., was even born.

He spent time in the Philippines and then was assigned to an Air Force base in Louisiana servicing B-52 bombers.

Roth said he was promoted to the rank of sergeant and wanted to relist, which would have let him rise to the rank Davis had achieved. However, he ended his service after four years because his parents got sick.

Vince Albers

Army veteran Vincent Albers became close to a set of twins during his basic training back in 1968. He had heard rumors they were both killed in Vietnam.

He asked for help looking up their names at the Vietnam Memorial during the trip, but the guide could not find them.

“Maybe that’s good news,” he said.

Albers served stateside during the Vietnam War. He mainly did funeral details for returning veterans. The secondary job of his unit was being stationed on White House grounds during the massive protests during the war.

“To keep your sanity, you had to separate yourself from your job because we were burying on average three people per week,” Albers said. “It takes a toll. It could have been us.”

Today’s news brings a lot of it back for Albers.

“The lack of empathy in the world that we still have wars. Thousands of people dying because of political idiots,” he said. “The amount of death, unnecessary. It brings back a whole lot of memories. The death is what brings back the memories.”

Jim English

Air Force veteran Jim English brought a handwritten list of people he had lost in the Vietnam War. During his honor flight visit Wednesday, he found all their names on the memorial wall and photographed them.

During the early years of Honor Flight Tri-State, the organizers spent the longest stretch of the day at the World War II Memorial. Now, most of the veterans on the trips served during the Vietnam War so the tour spends more time at that memorial.

The names of the Vietnam War Memorial are listed in chronological order of when they died. Jim English paused at one spot with his son, James English. Together they found five names grouped together.

“They were all on the same plane,” he told his son.

All told, English said he lost nine people in Vietnam. “It’s stupid having wars,” he said. “The whole secret, it’s like when somebody calls you a name, don’t call it back.”