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Public invited to welcome veterans home from 2022 Honor Flight

Brunswick News - 5/7/2022

May 7—This year's Honor Flight is taking off early this morning, and the nonprofit Golden Isles Honor Flight is asking as many residents as possible to show up at the Brunswick airport this evening to welcome the veterans home.

James Vivenzio, guardian leader for Honor Flight, said the group of veterans is meeting at 5 a.m. and leaving at 7 a.m. for Washington, D.C., where they will tour various war memorials.

They'll return the same day around 9 p.m. to a packed terminal at the Brunswick Golden Isles Airport, Vivenzio said. He recommended arriving around 8 p.m. to carve out a spot.

"Some people dress up as Uncle Sam, or in very patriotic garb, bring small flags," Vivenzio said. "A lot of people who are family of the veterans will make signs with a picture of them in their uniform back in the 40s or 50s or 60s or whatever."

The Brunswick High School Band and sword cordon from the Glynn Academy U.S. Marines JROTC will also welcome the veterans home.

"The fact is, for that one day, these veterans are rock stars. They really are," Vivenzio said. "They finally, a lot of them, are getting their due and their recognition.

"We get letters from wives and families regarding their father or husband who would never talk about their military experience, it was traumatic for them, and then this flight opens the gate and they talk about what they saw and what they went through. It's been very cathartic for these veterans."

To illustrate how much of an impact the trip can have, Golden Isles Honor Flight President and 2022 Flight Leader Eddie VanDerbeck recalled an earlier Honor Flight on which he'd been a guardian for a Korean War and Vietnam War vet named Tom Walters.

Walters was not very open about his time in the service, but touring the monuments with three daughters and their families — who lived in D.C. and followed the bus — had an evident effect.

"I was kind of the fly on the wall that time," VanDerbeck said. "They got to connect with their dad in a way they had never done before because he didn't speak about his time in the service and...the engagements they had had."

It's also a good experience for young people.

"It gives the younger generation an appreciation for the sacrifices," VanDerbeck said. "Not just the lives that were lost, but the time away from family and service to country."

A total of 77 veterans from the Brunswick and St. Simons Island area are making the pilgrimage this year, VanDerbeck said. Each branch is represented, he said. The roster includes two WWII veterans.

Veterans travel for free, accompanied by a guardian who pays, Vivenzio said. Once they arrive, the veterans are loaded onto tour buses and taken to memorials around the U.S. capital.

The Honor Flight program began in 2005 and Golden Isles Honor Flight held its first journey in 2015. It was for World War II and Korean War veterans initially, said Vivenzio. Veterans of the Vietnam War were included later.

"I think it gives the community something to rally around. How could you know to be enthused and supportive of something like that?" Vivenzio said.

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