Honor Flight Central Florida Concludes it’s 2015 Flight Mission Season!

Honor Flight Central Florida Concludes it’s 2015 Flight Mission Season!

Orlando, FL – October 25, 2015

Yesterday Honor Flight Central Florida concluded our flight schedule with our final 2015 mission. We are pleased to have honored 150 Veterans in 2015 with a free trip to the Capital to see and reflect at the memorials a grateful Nation built for them. It is amazing when the stars (and stripes) line up and all the details that go in to planning these trips come together in the form of long overdue thanks and tribute to those who served and sacrificed for all Americans. This past year we were honored to pay tribute to some real heroes. Their valiant service thrust them in to history during D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge, Heartbreak Ridge, and Hamburger Hill, and took them to places like Okinawa, Italy, Germany, France, Japan, China, India, Burma, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan, and involved them in many more battles and at many more fronts that most of us only get to read about, if we care to. The memorials we visit will endure, but our Greatest Generation and our aging Veterans will not. We hope the genuine sense of urgency we have to honor them and preserve history by learning and sharing the individual stories we hear is shared by you. All of us have the ability to provide meaningful tribute in a very personal way to these heroes with just a few simple words – “Thank you for your service, and welcome home”. So the next time you are shopping or socializing or doing anything you do during any usual day, if you see someone proudly displaying a cap or shirt that they are a Veteran, take a minute and thank them. That simple gesture will pay them a blessing that is long overdue. They put others ahead of themselves. They preserved the “American way of life” for us. They left their homes and their families and friends to go to foreign places and perform acts contrary to their nature so that you could be free. They endured pain, saw the atrocities of war, and live with those memories not because they wanted to “be someone” but because they wanted to “do something” – and they did it for us. They wrote a blank check to America for an amount up to, and including their lives. Harry Truman said it best during a speech to the Nation – “Our debt to the heroic men and valiant women in the service of our Country can never be repaid. They have earned our undying gratitude. America will never forget their sacrifices.” They did their part. All gave some and some gave all. For you. For me. For us. They honored us with their service, so take a moment to honor them. You will find that the random act of kindness you perform will have an impact. You may be told that that Veteran has never been thanked before. You may get a smile for taking the time to say thanks. You may start up a conversation and get to hear some personal stories about that Veterans experiences. You might make them tear up. They might make you tear up. The small effort we need to consciously take the time to remember them and honor them is worth it and owed them. Remember, “we can’t all be heroes, some of us have to stand on the curb and clap when they go by.”