Honor Flight: More money, veterans sought for D.C. trip

Jan. 24--JACKSONVILLE -- With five months before a tentative liftoff, the organizers of an effort to fly local veterans to see the national monuments dedicated to America's wars need far more money and veterans willing to make the trip.

Most retired from military service themselves, the dozen or so members of the Calhoun County Honor Flight committee have taken to meeting twice a month in recent weeks, up from just once before, cloistered Monday evenings in a large back room of Jacksonville'sAmerican Legion Post 57.

On one such meeting Monday night, with leather-bound organizers and notepads spread over a long row of tables, committee chairman David Hall listened as the group's treasurer reviewed the numbers.

The goal: Raise $70,000 to send 99 veterans and 50 guardians to Washington, D.C., for a visit to each of the capitol's marble and granite tributes to the last century's wars. Start May 17, 2017, at the National World War II Monument, and end the day at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

So far, the group has raised nearly $39,000, Chris Crauthers said. Twenty-three veterans and 16 guardians -- needed to provide medical care and other assistance -- have applied to go.

"If we're still coming up short," Hall told the group of former soldiers, airmen, and federal employees, "we need to start looking at that realization."

The committee members' search for donations has been far-ranging, as shown by the minutes of previous meetings.

They've made their targets church congregations and the area's largest employers, supermarkets and small storefronts. They're written letters, sent emails, and made phone calls to bankers, congressmen and university presidents.

Some have given thousands; others have committed, but have yet to cut a check.

The search for veterans, encompassing nine counties, has turned up men willing mostly in Calhoun County, committee members said Monday. Most served their country during the Vietnam War, though a handful saw the global carnage of World War II.

Many of the committee's members are involved with both the Anniston and Oxford chapter of Disabled American Veterans, and also are members of Jacksonville'sAmerican Legion.

Efforts to attract veterans through other chapters of both organizations, though, have been met with tepidity.

"People say, 'I'm interested, I'm interested,' but we're not seeing the results," Hall said.

He's heard one reason: Veterans of more recent conflicts may be waiting to sign up to save room for veterans of the older, though he notes that the committee has already vowed to give the oldest and least-firm first pick.

There is an urgency to the committee's mission, because the window for some veterans may soon be closed by declining health and ability.

One WWII veteran who'd committed to making the trip -- a 99-year-old retired lieutenant colonel -- recently died.

"He was very excited to go," Mike Abrams, once the Army's spokesman at the Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal Facility and now the group's de facto public relations specialist, said Monday by phone. "He just couldn't make it."

The man's family asked the committee keep the money that would've sent him to Washington, D.C., members learned Monday night.

The bulk of the money needed with the number of veterans the committee wants covers a chartered plane for the travelers up to the capital.

So, as a failsafe, the group now considers one possible option: to join with another group's honor flight out of Marietta, Ga.

That promises challenges, too, chief among them transportation up to Atlanta -- a potentially hours-long trip by bus, unless a plane flew to Anniston.

If not, "that'd make a long day a lot longer" for the veterans, committee member Jack Hurlbut said.

The group made no decision on the option, presented by Hall, remaining committed to realizing Calhoun County's own honor flight.

"Most of us are veterans. We know what it means," Hall said after the meeting. Visiting Washington's monuments "gives them closure, sometimes."

Staff writer Zach Tyler: 256-235-3564. On Twitter @ZTyler_Star.

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