Members of Villages Honor Flight turned out en masse Wednesday morning to mark the upcoming 50th mission to Washington, D.C. in a special way.
Shortly after 10 a.m., members of the group, veterans and guardians involved in the upcoming flight and The Villages Twirlers and Drum Corps filed onto the front field at The Villages Polo Club and before long, they had perfectly formed the number 50 with an exclamation point to hammer home the special occasion.
“It really came together well,” said Villager Debbie Diroff, who is serving as flight director on the upcoming historic mission. “I lost some sleep worrying about this but I didn’t need to. I had a lot of great volunteers to help.”
Diroff, of the Village of Charlotte, said one of the things she worried about was if enough people would turn out to form the number 50. As it turns out, she worried for nothing.
“You just don’t know until people come out,” she said. “But I think the attendance was outstanding, probably 300 people or more.”
One of those in attendance – all the way from Baltimore, Md. – was Mary Overholser, who has been greeting Honor Flights at Baltimore Washington International Airport at the rate of about 200 a year since 2009. She was a special guest of Villages Honor Flight at Wednesday event and also was visiting her brother, Mike Salmon, and his wife, Terri, who live in the Village of Amelia. Terri, an Army veteran, will be making her fifth flight as a guardian on the special April 1 mission.
When asked what it meant to be in The Villages for the special “50!” event, Overholser quickly teared up.
“It’s very rewarding,” she said quietly. “It’s incredibly awesome and such a privilege to be involved.”
Her sister-in-law agreed.
“It’s a privilege for me,” she said, adding that she’s hoping to make her sixth trip as a guardian in 2021 when a flight comprised of all women heads to our nation’s capital to show to tour the various war memorials and Arlington National Cemetery.
Meanwhile, Village of Briar Meadow resident Ann Pelle, who serves as captain of The Villages Twirlers and Drum Corps, was enjoying seeing her team form the exclamation point during the historic event after putting on a performance for the veterans in attendance.
“It was a really cool idea,” she said of Diroff’s idea to form the number 50 as a special photo op. “We didn’t know where we were going to be in the five and the zero, and all of sudden we turned out to be the exclamation point. I thought that was really special.”
Pelle, who has strong military ties through her father, husband Mike, son Sean Crittenden and son-in-law John Vebrnick, said it was a great honor for her team to be included in Wednesday’s festivities.
“We have never missed any Honor Flight events, be it flightless or the ones that go to D.C. to entertainment at the reunions,” she said. “It’s an honor and we have been at every single event that they do.”
Pelle added that giving their time to veterans is something her team plans to keep doing for quite a long time.
“We hope we can just get to come out for it forever,” she said. “As long as we are around, we’re going to be here to support our veterans.”
The April 1 50th mission will include 44 veterans, two of whom served in World War II. The mission also includes veterans from the Korean War, Vietnam War, the Berlin Crisis, the Cold War and others.
Villages Honor Flight formed in late 2011 and made its first flight to Washington, D.C. on May 26, 2012. Veterans participating in the events meet at American Legion Post 347 in the wee hours of the morning and take buses to Orlando International Airport. From there, they fly to Baltimore and after many special greetings at the airport, they take a bus tour through the city and visit the National World War II Memorial, the Korean War Veterans Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial.
This past January, the organization announced that beginning Jan. 1 it would only accept applications from those who are 80 or older. Joe Hambright, chairman of the Villages Honor Flight Board of Directors, said the change in procedure was necessary because during the past two years, the number of applications has exceeded the number of veterans flown to our nation’s capital by more than 100 percent.
