WEST PALM BEACH — Amid a throng of flag-waving friends, families, Boy Scouts, Sea Cadets, firefighters and a baseball team, the lesson learned at Palm Beach International Airport on Saturday night was simple: Once a hero, always a hero.
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“This was the most honorable thing that ever happened to me,” said Irwin Klein, 91, of Jensen Beach. Klein, a Navy veteran who served in the Pacific during World War II, was among a plane full of WW II vets who flew to Washington, D.C., on Saturday. The all-expense paid trip was sponsored by Honor Flight, a non-profit group that flies veterans to Washington to visit and reflect at their memorials.
Klein was escorted through the cheering crowd in his wheelchair, still beaming that he had been selected to place a wreath at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier: “It was done with pride and honor and sincerity for freedom and democracy,” Klein said of his solemn task.
Many of the vets, teenagers when they enlisted, walked slowly or were pushed in wheelchairs down a pathway roped off to hold back the crowd of over 100 cheering supporters decked out in red, white and blue. Laura Bakal and Lucille Zavodnick, neighbors in Boynton Beach, sat patiently together waiting for their husbands. Both women said their spouses were so excited about the trip that neither slept the night before.
“These guys deserve it,” Bakal said. “If it wasn’t for these guys, we would all be speaking Japanese.”
Rick Gass, with Palm Beach County Fire Rescue, welcomes a veteran returning from an Honor Flights trip to Washington on Saturday.
Since 2009, Southeast Honor Flights have taken about about 1,500 veterans to Washington, where they visit the World War II Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. But it’s estimated that fewer than 1 million veterans survive of the 12 million to 16 million American men and women who served in World War II. Some 96,000 — the highest number — were in Florida at the start of 2014. And, with most veterans in their 90s, more than 500 are believed to pass away every day. The group typically sends two flights in the spring and two in the fall.
Among the crowd was U.S. Congressman Patrick Murphy, D-Jupiter. For Murphy, who is up for re-election, the airport was the ninth and final stop after a full day of campaigning, although he was indistinguishable from the rest of the crowd. Murphy said he started going to the Honor Flight arrivals about three years ago. His grandfather was a member of the 101st Airborne and among the first who landed at Normandy during D-Day, Murphy said.
As vets passed by, Murphy reached out to shake their hands and give them a challenge coin, given to members of each branch of the military. Murphy had his own challenge coins made, depicting the state of Florida on one side. He said he always carries one with him to give to veterans he meets.
“I love it,” Murphy said of the Honor Flight arrival events. “You don’t see many dry eyes here.”