In a year when flying vets to Washington was off the table, Honor Flight tried something different. This year the veterans came to them.
In a typical year Honor Flight would be offering free trips to Washington DC, as a thank you to those who served. Instead, the group has had to find new ways to connect vets.
Holly Shaffner is the group's spokesperson.
“We want to reinvent the Veterans Day Parade,“ she said. “I’ve been through several drive-through food distributions and helped out there. So if they could do a drive through food distribution, why can we do a drive through parade.”
This year is especially difficult for the World War II veterans who are all in their 90s. Melvin Hubbard, age 96, was planning to be there. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps when he was 19 years old. Now he lives with his daughter Carol.
“My daughter is willing to take me,” Hubbard said. ”So that will be a fun thing. I don’t get out too much but I will enjoy anything that comes along.”
Cars lined up Wednesday down the street from the parking lot on the National University campus in San Diego. Over 1,000 veterans were invited to what was a different kind of Veterans Day parade. The old vets stayed in their cars, while volunteers carrying signs and cheered as they drove by. Several of the vets had been on previous Honor Flights. Others were on the list for future flights, but the clock is ticking.
“We have about 120 world War II and Korean War veterans that are on our list and ready to go. Some of them came through today and we met them for the first time,” Shaffner said. “And unfortunately, as we were making calls to notify them, we had a lot of them ... we had several of them who passed away.”
Honor Flight San Diego hopes to be back in the air in May, depending on the course of the virus.
