It is really a “round-about” story. “I was talking to the high school about World War II. I told them that until you have to fight for your freedom, you will never appreciate it.” Rex Pumphrey enters the narrative about this time and tells Bob Engel about the "Honor Flights" for World War II veterans, and Bob applies to the program in 2009.
Well, the application gets misplaced. A year later Dr. Barry Booth gets word about the lost application. He is already in the process at the time of preparing for another Honor Flight with W.W.II Veterans. He intervenes in the process and that’s how Bob Engel gets on Honor Flight 4 in 2010.
The inaugural Honor Flight took place in May of 2005. Six small planes flew out of Springfield, Ohio, taking twelve World War II veterans on a visit to the memorial in Washington, DC. Word of mouth works and by August of 2005, a waiting list of veterans seeking this honoring experience began applying for the trip. Commercial airline carriers were recruited and the "Honor Flight Network" developed. It isn’t just a veteran thing because “guardians” assist the veterans through the airport turmoil and the actual trip to the memorial in DC.
“You would not believe how they take care of you on this flight,” Engel says. And all those guardians are volunteers and “they want to do it!”
The Honor Flight Network program is the child of Earl Morse, a physician assistant and Retired Air Force Captain who wanted to honor the veterans he had taken care of for the past 27 years. Think about timing! In May of 2004, the World War II Memorial was completed and dedicated in Washington, D.C. His World War II veteran patients were talking about it. It became apparent that many veterans could never make the trip without physical help from friend or family. Such a trip was not feasible for many of them.
In December of 2004, Morse asked one of his World War II veteran patients if it would be all right if Earl personally flew him out to D.C., free of charge, to visit his memorial. That was the beginning of what has become the "Honor Flights"
By the time Robert Engel put his application in, the Honor Flight Network was looking at getting 25,000 veterans from across the United States to the World War II Memorial. Mobiles Dr. Barry Booth first became involved in the nationwide Honor Flight project as a guardian for W.W.II vets in Montgomery. He brought the program to South Alabama and that is the connection of Booth with Engel. By the end of September of 2010, 380 veterans from our area had visited their World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. Bob Engel was one of those 380.
“On my Honor Flight we had 86 vets, 44 of them in wheel chairs,” Engel remembers. “And they all learned about it by word of mouth. We need to get the word out to our vets.” People that want to know about the program can call Robert Engel at 251-989-6896. He wants to help every WW II vet get connected to the Honor Flights.
