Information on how to helpHonor Flight is available at www.honorflight.org or www.honorair.org .
J.C. Williams made plenty of memorable flights, including some during which he was shot at, as a U.S. Navy pilot during World War II. On Wednesday, the former lieutenant commander from Siler City was a guest of honor on another flight, which took 102 veterans to Washington to see the national memorial to their service.
"Our veterans of that generation never really asked for anything or expected anything," said Mitzi Ellis, co-leader of Triad Flights of Honor, which made the trip Wednesday from Piedmont Triad International Airport in Greensboro. "They just came back and went right back to their jobs and their families, or whatever they had interrupted.
"This is long overdue."
Honor Flight was inspired by a small volunteer effort to take veterans to Washington. to see the National World War II Memorial. The memorial was dedicated in 2004, by which time the youngest of those it was meant to salute were already in their late 70s.
Jeff Miller of Hendersonville heard of a pilot who was taking vets one or two at a time on his small plane and was recruiting pilot friends to do likewise. Miller loved the idea and, though he's not a pilot, thought he could expand the effort across the country.
This fall, Honor Flight conducted its 100th charter nationwide.
In North Carolina, the flights are organized by Rotary Clubs, which recruit veterans and volunteer "guardians" to make the trips and raise money to pay for the flights. North Carolina clubs have sponsored more than a dozen of the flights so far from Asheville, Charlotte and Greensboro.
All flights land at Reagan National Airport, where fire trucks perform a water-gun salute, creating an arch of water over the plane. It's symbolic of the washing away of foreign soil when a plane returns from war.
At the gate, US Airways employees greet the veterans with bunting, and members of the Washington Symphony Orchestra play patriotic music.
The veterans load onto buses. They spend a couple of hours at the memorial, have lunch, visit other memorials, then head back to the airport. When they return home, family members and volunteers are waving flags and holding banners.
"It's a pretty powerful day," Ellis said.
Williams returned to Siler City after the war and started his own school-furniture business, where he still works half-days. He doesn't think the war changed him much.
Reached before his Honor Flight, Williams said he didn't feel he needed any more thanks for his service during World War II or the Korean War, when he was called up again.
"When I got out, I was through with it," he said. "You know, you were young then, and you knew that the young people had to fight the war - the old people couldn't.
"Then you were just glad the war was over and you had lived through it."