GREENSBORO — To get to the airport in time for their 6 a.m. flight, the plan is for Doug “Sparky” Stewart to hop into his neighbor’s car hours earlier and pick up Jim Collins, his buddy since their high school days back at High Point Central.
“That’s the earliest I’ve gotten up since I’ve been in the Marine Corps,” joked Stewart, 80, about boarding their Triad Honor Flight on Wednesday at Piedmont Triad International Airport. The plane is scheduled to take them and about 100 other veterans on a day trip to the nation’s capital and the country’s monuments for free.
Stewart was a Marine rifleman expert and weapons instructor at Little Creek Amphibious Base in Va. Beach, Virginia. He later went to work for Hewlett-Packard.
Collins, whose father was drafted in World War II, served in military intelligence at the Pentagon. He would use the G.I. Bill to attend Western Carolina University and later retire after 40 years in the furniture industry.
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Collins, who has lung cancer, had to have a chemotherapy treatment rescheduled so that he could go. He told organizers the trip meant that much to him.
“They said if I was sick or something they’d roll me around in a hospital bed to the monuments,” said Collins, 79, with a laugh. “The people who run the Triad Flight of Honor program are really organized and compassionate and do whatever they can to get you there.”
Like countless veterans before them, they want to honor those who did not make it home.
Formed in 2020, the flights typically include about 200 people, including veterans and a guardian for each one, medical personnel and other support staff. Stewart’s neighbor, Dr. John McKinney, will be the guardian for both men. Like other volunteers, he will pay his own way.
Wednesday’s flight also includes two sets of brothers and a husband and wife in their 90s who served during the Korean War.
“The word that comes to mind for me is awesome,” described Alison Huber, Triad Honor Flight’s executive director, of seeing the emotions veterans go through. “It can almost be overwhelming, the experience itself. It can also be very therapeutic for many of our veterans because it’s one thing to go and see the Vietnam wall, but it’s totally different to do it with other veterans.”
While in Washington, the veterans will visit Arlington Cemetery, the Lincoln Memorial and a number of other places that pay tribute to the fallen.
A crowd of about 1,000 well-wishers are expected to greet them on their return about 8:15 p.m. Wednesday, including retired and current members of the military, who usually wear shirts and caps with their branches, service years or insignias. The public is invited and parking at the airport is free.
Stewart and Collins, who often catch dinner with their wives at a local pizza restaurant and have attended numerous class reunions over the past six decades, already have their day mapped out.
They also want to look up the name of Doug Shirley, a fellow classmate on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall.
Soldiers don’t forget.
“Jim saw his sister at Walmart the other week,” Stewart said of the helicopter pilot, who died two weeks into his tour in Vietnam. “He was a good soul.”