WASHINGTON (WTOL) - Flag City Honor Flight sponsored a trip that took 28 Vietnam veterans with some of their spouses to the nation’s capital.
On their way to Washington, there is one thing that connects the Wilcox’ from Kenton, Dice Taylor from Newark and Larry Taylor from Toledo: their common bond, their love of country and their expectation to see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
“I feel like I’m going to Washington to pay my respects to the heroes. They are the ones who didn’t come back alive. I was fortunate enough that I didn’t even get a Purple Heart,” veteran Dick Wilcox said.
“I’m excited for him to go today and to pay his respects, it’s what he would like to do to all the men that didn’t come back,” his wife Carol Wilcox said.
“I retired from the military in 95 and I’m pretty sure that’s a lot of guys on that wall that I’ve known and will get to see,” veteran Larry Taylor said.
“It’s unreal. It truly is unreal. When I go to the vets memorial in Columbus, they have a section there for people that left items there and letters they wrote to the soldiers and just artifacts they left that just touches the heart,” veteran Dice Taylor said.
Going to the Vietnam memorial is not supposed to be easy. Paying respects to the 58,000 young who were called, proudly served but never came home is overwhelming.
Dan Zeigler had a 13-month tour as a marine in Vietnam. He and his wife, Carla, have been married for 46 years. At the wall, he tried finding the name of Medard Ruehle who was two years ahead of him in high school and was killed on April 11, 1967.
“That was when I got blown out of a tank. Some of my friends died that day, some died a couple of days later from the wounds. We all paid the price. Some paid a little bit, these guys paid it all,” veteran Dan Zeigler said.
“Probably real these wounds. Because he normally doesn’t talk about it and if he does is to another Vietnam war veteran. They will get together sometimes, we have friends and stuff that are vets also,” his wife Carla Zeigler said.
On Sunday, remember, reflect and renew were words present on the National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial.
After the attacks in 2001, the Pentagon was rebuilt in less than a year. The memorial was done in 2008.
Tim Nowicki of Perrysburg and his son Paul from Bowling Green shared their memories of the attack on the Flag City Honor Flight trip.
“I still remember what I was doing. I was at work and I work for OI (Owen’s Illinois) and they sent us home for the day because they were kinda shy and they didn’t know if something might be headed to their brand new building they had downtown so they dismissed everybody,” veteran Tim Nowicki said.
“I was also at work. We didn’t get sent home but weren’t really getting any work done because everybody had their radios on listening and we didn’t really hear much about the Pentagon. It was all about the towers and just seeing this is pretty neat that they did this for all those people,” Paul Nowicki said.
Dan Cummins and WTOL also documented the trip on social media as you can see below.
