APPLETON, WI (WTAQ) – Departing Appleton International Airport Wednesday, as they have many times over the past ten years, another Old Glory Honor Flight will be taking NE Wisconsin military veterans back to Washington DC for a busy day of touring the war memorials built in their honor.
But for the couple who started this program a decade ago, this flight is a milestone.
50 is a nice round number. And this week will mark the 50th Old Glory Honor Flight to take off from NE Wisconsin since things started in 2009.
“This is our 10th year of operations. We started in 2009. We’re doing 5 flights a year.”
Appleton attorney Drew MacDonald and his wife Diane got the program off the ground after looking for a project they both could get involved in.
“For us, we were really looking at how to get involved in an organization. We weren’t really sure what that was going to be. Drew and I are very different and to find something that we both gravitated towards…I thought it would be more difficult than that.”
Almost out of the blue, they saw a news report of an Old Glory Honor Flight leaving Milwaukee.
“There was a program on about a local Honor Flight in our state that was taking Appleton are vets out to DC on this thing called an Honor Flight and we had never heard about it before.”
That got them to thinking, how about putting a similar program together here so the veterans wouldn’t have to travel all the way to Milwaukee to catch their flight?
“Why should the vets from NE Wisconsin have to travel all the way down to Milwaukee to travel to Washington DC when we have a perfectly good airport right here in Appleton? So that started the wheels moving as far as why don’t we form our own organization in the Fox Valley to serve NE Wisconsin?’
Drew and Diane went on a couple of missions, as they call them, out of Milwaukee for the experience and learned the steps and contacts between here and D-C needed to make things run. Then, they were ready to fly.
“October 27th, 2009 will always be a special day in our lives. There’s a lot of the vets that went on that flight that we still remember. There are some that still show up at the ‘welcome homes’.
Diane MacDonald says each flight has its own personality, it never gets old. And that’s the goal….to never let this become ‘routine’. Each trip is an awesome experience for them, and the dedicated members of the Old Glory Honor Flight board.
“We don’t take for granted that first flight compared to the one coming up. They’re all great. But I will always think ‘boy, we really did this’. I mean, when you see all the people at the airport welcoming everyone home.”
And once they’re home, there are often bonus residuals. Veterans who’ve seldom, if ever, spoken about their war experiences to anyone begin to open up to family and close friends.
“When they take that openness back home when they start telling their family. We get feedback from the family that he’s never talked about this before. And then after the flight, then the floodgates are open and they’re having these conversations that they should have had decades ago.”
Counselors, who’ve been treating some of the war veterans for PTSD, tell Drew MacDonald the Old Glory Honor Flight trip did more good for their client than anything they’ve done in years. And Old Glory Honor Flight has spread its wings beyond D-C. A mission in 2012 brought World War Two veterans to Pearl Harbor. And earlier this year, a little over 50 Vietnam War veterans returned to southeast Asia. It’s all part of what keeps Drew and Diane MacDonald dedicated, enthused, and looking forward to the next decade.
“Where that takes us from here I don’t know. But we’re kind of excited to find out.”
For more information on the Old Glory Honor Flight, how you can donate or volunteer, click here.
