National Clothesline

Over 60 years have passed since the Second World War ended, but many emotional memories from that time were still fresh in the minds of over 200 veterans who visited the World War II Memorial in Washington D.C. Sept. 23 and 24.

The group of former soldiers made the trip free of charge thanks to the “Honor Air” program, which sprang from the mind of Jeff Miller, owner of Miller’s Cleaners in Hendersonville, NC, last March.

All 207 veterans of the group hailed from Hendersonville County in North Carolina, with ages ranging from 79 to 102. A chartered 737 jet took about half of them each day for a trip that made stops at the Memorial, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and Arlington National Cemetery.

“It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever been involved with in my life,” Miller said.

Of course, the trip itself was not an easy undertaking. In order to make it work, a committee of a dozen Honor Air members had to raise $130,000 overall in 12 weeks to fund the campaign.

With a local population of less than 100,000, raising such a large amount of money didn’t seem likely, but many citizens were more than willing to give back to the men who fought for the country so many years ago.

In fact, the committee received over 450 individual donations, plus the local American Legion raised more than $2,300 by selling spaghetti dinners at $5 a pop.

Also chipping in was Miller’s son, who, along with his friends, set up a collection area outside a Wal-Mart, bringing in a couple of thousand dollars. Even the local elementary school — Little Henderson — gave up its own funds for an end-of-the-year party to sponsor a couple of veterans.

“People of all walks of life, if they have five dollars that they can spare... I’ve had them walk up to me and hand it to me,” Miller added. “It’s really been something. In this world we live in, with so many negative things floating around — well, this came along at a really good time for me. It shows you that there is still a lot of good in the country.”

According to Miller, the open hospitality of the community made the daunting project more manageable.

“When you sign a charter for a jet for $71,500, it’s kind of weird,” he laughed. “Then, you start leasing coaches at a thousand dollars a day and start planning meals that cost, for the two days, $3,500 to $3,800, it all adds up. The money was the easy part though. All of the logistics was the complicated end of it.”

The project itself has been ongoing for a few months now, but the idea originally came to Miller shortly after his mother passed away at the beginning of the year. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease a few years ago and was never able to make a trip to Washington, DC.

“When she died in January, I was going through her things and found that my parents had given quite a bit of money (relative to their income) to the construction of the World War II Memorial and never got to see it. It just really bothered me.”

Miller’s mother lost a brother — a B-24 pilot — to the war, and his father, who also served on behalf of the Allies, passed away about four years ago, before the Memorial was completed.

Though neither of his parents could see the it firsthand, Miller still wanted to honor their memory and he also hoped to make sure other veterans in Hendersonville County had the opportunity to visit before it was too late.

It occurred to him that many veterans would be facing both fiscal and physical hardships. So, to make the trip possible, he would need a lot of donations, as well as volunteers, to accommodate everybody’s needs.

“When you’re dealing with a lot of World War II veterans — with an average age of 84 — a lot of them have very limited mobility. We couldn’t over do them,” Miller said.

On each day, a doctor accompanied the veterans, as well as six EMS/EMT volunteers and over 50 “guardians” who assisted participants with any physical or health limitations. The volunteers had to pay $300 each for the flight or find another way to arrive in DC under their own means.

“We actually had some people meet us there,” Miller said. “Twenty people flew up each day on commercial flights. They left early in the morning. We also had seven people on site who drove up by themselves a couple of days before.”

One of the obstacles that the Honor Air committee had to overcome was the simple fact that nobody had ever attempted such a trip for veterans before — at least not on such a grand scale.

“I have a friend in Ohio. His name is Earl Morse, a retired Air Force guy,” Miller said. “He was kind of an inspiration for me when I read about him a couple of years ago. He was flying World War II veterans to the Memorial in private planes.”

Morse was more than happy to share some of his trip-planning secrets, and now, Miller is happy to return the favor with whomever may follow his footsteps.

Fortunately, the event received a lot of publicity when reporter Bill Geist covered the weekend trip for CBS Sunday Morning, so it may inspire others to try and duplicate the success.

“The real beauty of the whole trip — other than getting the veterans up there — was we were hoping we’d be able to teach other people,” Miller explained. “I’ve probably had 300 e-mails, about one-third of which are requesting how to do it.”

Miller and the Honor Air committee are in the process of posting a planning outline on their web site, www.honorair.com.

Oddly enough, the first one to be using that plan may be Miller and Honor Air as the group has tentatively planned another trip in the coming Spring. Timeliness is an issue, though. Five veterans died since signing up for the original trip, so Miller knows they can’t afford to waste any time.

“I probably have gotten a thousand dollars in the mail between yesterday and today, after-the-fact money,” Miller said. “We’ll probably have about $25,000 left over. We’re going to hang onto some money because we still have some people that didn’t get to go.

“If we do one day, it will probably cost us about $50,000. For two days, it would be $100,000 to $110,000. I’ve already had people call and say, ‘When you’re ready and you need money, call us.’ These people have already given a substantial amount.”

If another trip does happen next year, Miller is confident that Honor Air will plan things a little better, knowing more of what to expect. Regardless, he and the committee were happy that they already accomplished their main goal: leave no man behind.

“Luckily, we brought home everyone that left with us and nobody came home hurt,” he said. “Our number one goal was to bring everybody back healthy and happy.”