A flight of honor from Waterloo to D.C.
Cedar Valley Honor Flight takes 31st flight of veterans to Washington
WATERLOO — It was better late than never for George North of Allison.
The 95-year-old veteran of the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War was one of the oldest, if not the oldest, veteran to make a Cedar Valley Honor Flight from Waterloo to see Washington, D.C. memorials Tuesday.
Now that he’s been there , he wondered what took him so long.
“It’s been great. A super experience,” he said. “I’d been here with the kids over 20 years ago now, but we’re seeing a lot of different places and it’s been a great day.
“I was really impressed with the memorial to the soldiers that fought in Korea,” he said. “It’s a lot bigger than I remembered; it’s unbelievable.”
Of course, it was his war. North trained air crews on survival skills during the war in the event they were shot down. After the war he was a dentist in Allison for “52 years, two months and 10 days,” he recited from memory.
“It’s a great trip,” he said of the Honor Flight. “I should have done it sooner. A lot sooner.”
Nearly 90 military veterans made the 31st Cedar Valley Honor Flight out of Waterloo Tuesday, June 17 to visit Washington, D.C. war memorials.
The veterans — mostly Vietnam or Vietnam-era veterans, but also a smattering of Korean War veterans, and their chaperones or “guardians,” visited the World War II, Korean War and Vietnam memorials as well as the Lincoln Memorial. They also witnessed the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery.
“It’s going great. You see a lot of stuff,” said Dennis Walthart of Colesburg, a U.S. Army veteran who served in Vietnam in 1969-70. “And it’s different than if you were driving around here with your family because you don’t know what all these buildings are. But you have a guide to tell what they are, and what the monuments are.
“It’s a quite interesting. It’s a full day,” he said. Vets checked in at the Waterloo airport at 5 a.m. and returned at about 9:30 p.m.
It’s nice to visit other vets as well, Walthart said, but it’s not a soul searching look back. “You don’t talk about what you did in the war. You talk about today,” he said. “You’ve got to let some of that other stuff go.”
They also visited the relatively new U.S. Navy memorial as well as the U.S. Air Force memorial and stopped at the memorial to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Finally, the veterans — men and women, of all branches of service — were treated to a sizeable homecoming of cheering loved ones and community well-wishers upon their return to the Waterloo Regional Airport.
The terminal was packed full, in a community turnout that included the Cedar Valley Big Band, the local Knights of Columbus; various veterans organizations and Airport Boulevard was lined with police and emergency vehicles with their lights flashing.
It was the kind of homecoming aging veterans of the Korean War, often referred to as “The Forgotten War,” and the controversial Vietnam conflict never received when they returned home. A brief video of some of the homecoming is shown here.
For Honor Flight board member Linda Bergmann — the unofficial sergeant at arms of Cedar Valley Honor Flight —the memorials remain the same in their import and impact, but every flight is different. She’s been on 27 of the 31 flights since they began from the Waterloo Regional Airport in 2011.
“It’s been great,” she said of Tuesday’s flight, despite muggy weather and the threat of rain. There were some brief delays as maintenance crews picked up fencing from the previous weekend’s military parade marking the 250th anniversary of the Army. Also, as veterans visited the Navy Memorial, President Trump’s motorcade went by as the air was filled with police sirens.
As always, veterans were greeted by Vietnam veteran and retired Brig. Gen. David Cole of Waterloo, in full dress uniform with his wife Connie, upon their arrival at the national World War II memorial. Gen. Cole is a graduate of Waterloo West High School and the United States Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. and lives in the Washington area.
“Just to hear these guys, they get so excited” over the memorials, Bergmann said, most of which she’s seen many times. At the Navy memorial, “the guys who were in the Navy, they all but catapulted” out of their seats, bolting off the tour buses to see the memorial in the limited time they had.
“It’s just heartwarming,” Bergmann said. The cadre of veterans on this trip included a younger critically ill veteran who received a medical discharge. She became emotional relating their exchange.
“He’s thanking me over and over —- and now I’m gonna cry — for letting him come!” she said, voice trembling. “And I said. ‘Oh my God, don’t thank me, I need to thank you for what you’ve done for our country! ‘ ”
He was accompanied by his veteran father. “His dad couldn’t look at me,” Bergmann said. “I was ready to fall apart.”
Service was a family affair for several on the flight; the roster also included one father who’d served in Korea and a son who’d served in Vietnam. Some younger veterans served as guardians for their veteran parents or relatives.
And they were a talkative, excited bunch. “They’re like magnets; they want to tell me all their stories,” Bergmann said.
But there’s one memorial she now avoids — the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, simply know to many as “The Wall,” one of the most emotional stops on the tour — especially on a flight full of Vietnam veterans.
“I can’t go there anymore,” she said. “It just tears me up to see those guys stand there and bawl. I can’t do it anymore.” Bergmann is a member of the Waterloo West High School Class of 1965 and had five classmates killed in Vietnam. Several of her veteran classmates made an Honor Flight en masse in 2017,
She’s also interested in the Korean memorial because she had four uncles who served in that conflict.
Cedar Valley Honor Flight has taken more than 30,000 veterans from Waterloo to Washington. The flights began exclusively for World War II veterans, in order to get those aging veterans of “The Greatest Generation” to see the national World War II memorial, completed in 2004. Like many of the “hubs” in the overall Honor Flight network, the local flights were expanded to include Korea, Vietnam and Cold War veterans as the numbers of World War II veterans dwindled.
One of the Waterloo flight initiators and co-organizers, former Black Hawk County Supervisor Craig White, was an Army forward artillery observer in Vietnam. When Eastern Iowa Honor Flight out of Cedar Rapids had its first flight in June 2010 and half the veterans on the plane were from the Waterloo area, White initiated a push for flights out of Waterloo, open to veterans in Black Hawk and surrounding counties.
He enlisted Bergmann’s services as she retired from a career as an educator. White also was joined in the effort by then-fellow County Supervisor Frank Magsamen, a former Waterloo fire chief. They raise funds throughout the year, including a spring variety show. Other executive board members are Dave Grimm and Mark Little. They have a large group of volunteers.
Organizers have said the flights may be expanded at some point to include 1991 Persian Gulf War veterans as that war memorial in Washington is completed.
Organizers try to emphasize to veterans that they didn’t have to be in combat to be eligible for an Honor Flight, because ever one’s job was important. It’s a “thank-you” regardless of where or how a veteran served.
“Most of them are just in awe of what they’re seeing,” Bergmann said. “We see the same sights, but it’s different every time you go. Different people.”
At 78 she says she thinks this will be her last flight, but she notes every time she says that, “people just roll their eyes” because they know her better. She quickly adds she’s shooting for an even 30 flights.
“I don’t know if I’ll make it,” she said, but added, “I just enjoy it so much.”
More information Cedar Valley Honor Flight, including how to donate, register a veteran, volunteer or serve as a guardian, may be obtained by clicking here,
Pat Kinney is a freelance writer and former longtime news staffer with the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier and, prior to that, several years at the Ames Tribune. He is currently an oral historian with the Grout Museum District in Waterloo. His “View from the Cedar Valley” column is part of “Iowa Writers Collaborative,” a collection of news and opinion writers from around the state who previously and currently work with a host of Iowa newspapers, news organizations and other publications. They are listed here. Clink on their individual links to check them out, subscribe for free - and, if you believe in the value of quality journalism, please support this column and/or any of theirs with a paid subscription. Thank you.