It’s been a while since I updated my Photo Blog. The good reason is… I’ve been busy! My schedule tends to be very predictable each year. September and October kill me in the fall. I deer hunt and rabbit hunt in November through Thanksgiving weekend. I don’t do any shopping on Cyber Monday, but nonetheless Cyber Monday marks a return to normal schedule until February. So although these next few blogs will be a little old, I still want to throw up some of the work I’ve done over the last couple of months.

I’ve had the pleasure of documenting the Honor Flights the past three years for Touchstone Energy. The Honor Flight is a program that flies World War II and Korean War veterans to Washington D.C. to see the memorials that honor them and their service to our country.

There were twenty-five veterans on this year’s trip, and their stories alone were enough to make any reality show on television today pale in comparison (not that reality TV needs any help looking stupid).

One particular vet from Louisville, witnessed not one but four nuclear bomb tests in the South Pacific aboard a Navy cruiser in 1951. They were positioned too close to the first detonation and his ship nearly capsized, while having his eye brows singed off during the blast.

Another vet served aboard the same U.S.S. Hornet that launched the Doolittle raids in February 1942. The Hornet was later sunk and he treaded water with a life jacket for 72 hours before he was rescued.

One of the best stories to come out of our trip to D.C. was with Charles Jackson Jr., a vet who now lives in Maysville, but who grew up in Fleming County. A Kentucky man named Frank Sousley helped raise the flag over Iwo Jima, and is immortalized in the famous photo by Joe Rosenthal and at the Marine Corp Memorial. Jackson graduated with Sousley from Fleming County High School in 1939 .

Many of these men never received a parade in honor of their service because they simply returned home in 1946 to places like Salt Lick, Louisville, Maysville, and Somerset, to pick up where life left off in 1941. That’s what makes this trip so special. These men saved the world but are now very feeble and vulnerable. Many of them won’t live to see Christmas. Thousands of WWII Veterans are now dying on a daily basis. I guess life comes full circle after a while. This trip is so special because this was their last hoo rah.

As I write this the week after Thanksgiving, getting the opportunity to share this trip is one of the things that I’m thankful for each year.

Passengers and local military are always there to greet us in the Baltimore Airport.

Each place that we go in Washington or Baltimore has it’s own set of volunteers called the ground crew who help.

This year we even had a police escort for the day.

Senator Bob Dole and his wife Elizabeth are usually at the WWII Memorial to greet veterans from all over the country.

The volunteers who go on the trip to help are called Guardians.

Charles Jackson Jr. in front of the Marine Corp Memorial. Kentucky native Frank Sousley
is second from left (carrying the rifle) on the memorial.

These guys love flirting with the airline attendants.

The men receive mail call from friends and family before landing back in Louisville.

The parade of several hundred people waiting on us in the concourse of the Louisville Airport is the highlight of the trip.