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Honor flight group raises funds
Published 8/19/2010 in Local News
By SHAJIA AHMAD
sahmad@gctelegram.com
Local community organizers are hoping to raise enough funds to sponsor a charter flight out of Garden City to fly World War II veterans to the nation's capital.
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Brad Nading/Telegram Dan Curtis, project coordinator for the Central Prairie RC&D Council, talks about getting involvement in fund raising projects for honor flights Wednesday during a meeting at the Garden City American Legion.
An initiative of the Central Prairie Honor Flight, a branch of the national Honor Flight Network, the Great Bend-based nonprofit group, already has flown 834 WWII-era veterans on 10 flights to Washington D.C. — at no cost to veterans — over the last two years, according to its project coordinator Dan Curtis.
The national organization, created in 2005 to transport WWII veterans to Washington, D.C., to visit and reflect at their memorials if physical or financial limitations keep them away, took root in Kansas a few years ago and in southwest Kansas in early 2009.
Several WWII-era veterans from the area already have taken part in trips where they must first travel by bus or car to join groups out of Denver or Kansas City, Mo.
But others, like Rosemary Corbett's father, Garden City resident Martin Huschka, are still on a waiting list encompassing about 40 to 50 WWII veterans who reside in the immediate area and hundreds more in the western half of the state.
Along with a few other locals, Corbett has taken the initiative to try to raise part of the $80,000 to $100,000 necessary to fly the veterans out of Garden City.
"My dad taught me to be a community-minded person and be of service to others," she said. "I'm actually the one who encouraged him to go, and I think for him to go with other comrades, people who have gone through the same things he has, would be incredibly meaningful."
Corbett is putting together details for what she and other veterans' advocates hope will be a dinner, raffle, auction and entertainment venue for fundraising in mid-September.
Curtis, who met with Corbett and a few others Wednesday, said he hopes enough local communities in western Kansas will "step up to the plate" to raise funds for the hundreds of WWII veterans in their respective areas who are still waiting.
Travel is difficult for many of the veterans in their late 70s to early 90s, and making the trip as short and comfortable as possible is the goal, Curtis said.
"It's the difference between night and day," Curtis told the group that met to discuss fundraising efforts at the American Legion, 125 W. Pine St., on Wednesday, referring to traveling to larger airports. "Our veterans deserve a flight out of the area."
The Honor Flight program relies entirely on donations, with veterans groups contributing toward some expenses to raise the $650 it costs to host one on a flight.
At least 1,000 veterans are on a waiting list statewide to make the trip, according to Curtis, though between 12,000 and 15,000 reside in the state.
Curtis often reiterates that time is of the essence: Kansas loses 17 WWII veterans a day.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that 900 of the 2.5 million living WWII veterans — many in their 80s and 90s — die each day.
If the local group can raise the necessary funds by the end of September, Curtis hopes to coordinate a 172-seat charter plane out of Garden City.
The Great Bend group's next flight is planned for Sept. 28 out of Wichita, according to Curtis.
The national quest to assist veterans to the memorial began as an initiative by a retired Air Force captain, Earl Morse.
Morse was a physician's assistant at an Ohio veterans' clinic during the building and dedication of the WWII memorial in 2004, and he noted the eagerness among his patients to see it.
But many could neither make the trip alone — most WWII veterans are in their late 80s — nor shoulder the journey's financial or physical burdens.
Morse, who also was a private pilot and a member of the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, enlisted the help of a dozen other pilots to escort many veterans he knew through his work at the hospital to the D.C. memorial. Morse made sure that the flights took place at no cost to the veterans, imploring his pilot friends to burden the costs.
They agreed, and the first honor flight took place in May 2005, transporting 12 veterans to the memorial.
Today, the umbrella nonprofit organization that advises groups across the nation governs departure hubs in 39 states, including five in Kansas.
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