The Honor Flight Network program was conceived by Earl Morse, an Air Force retiree working as a physician’s assistant in a small Veterans Affairs health clinic in Springfield, Ohio.
In 2004, the National World War II Memorial was completed in Washington, D.C., and Morse’s patients who served in that war were excited about its completion but also lamented that they would never have the chance to visit it. Morse, who was also a pilot, offered to fly one of his patients to visit the memorial, free of charge. The man broke down and cried, then accepted the offer. The next week, Morse made the same offer to another veteran.
Before long, Morse was asking other pilots to help him. The inaugural Honor Flight took place in May 2005, with six small planes taking 12 World War II veterans to Washington, D.C., to spend the day. Three months later, the waiting list was so long that the program began using commercial airline carriers so it could accommodate as many veterans as possible.
Now with dozens of flights a week, the program is aggressively pursuing its goal of transporting 25,000 veterans to the World War II Memorial in 2009.
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