Ky. veterans thanked, cheered during Honor Flight trip to nation’s capital

LEXINGTON, Ky. (WKYT) - The Greatest Generation is in its twilight hour.

Honor Flight is an organization that started 17 years ago to take war veterans to the memorials built for them before the generation of vets is lost.

Central Kentucky has a chapter called Honor Flight Kentucky. WKYT’s Phil Pendleton was able to go on the trip. He says the first Honor Flight he went on 12 years ago, the plane would have been filled with almost all World War II veterans, but, this year, there were only two.

The 95-year-old Lewis Fields and 98-year-old Howard Evans joined more than 60 war vets on the latest Honor Flight. They were just teenagers during World War II.

Fields and Evans were young men serving at the end of the war. Both were in the Pacific theater around the same time, in the same areas.

“I don’t take any credit for doing anything unusual. Just went where they told me, did what they told me,” Evans said.

Saturday, they were given the hero’s treatment all over Washington DC. They were both honored by laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

There were also veterans from the Korean War and the Vietnam War on the Honor Flight.

“Well, it makes you feel better to see something that you were in, you know. That they put out. It was just over when I got out,” said Korean War veteran Ralph Renfrow. “They called it the Korean forgotten war.”

All the veterans were cheered and congratulated at numerous stops during the trip. Vietnam vets especially, saying it meant the world to them.

“It was the longest 13 months of my life. But I watched, and I was one of them, 18-year-old boys grow up into men,” said Vietnam veteran Gary Ehrgott.

The Honor Flight operates solely on donations and the trip Saturday from Lexington was made possibly by Kentucky’s Touchstone Energy Cooperatives.

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