At 3 a.m. on Friday morning, 20 veterans gathered in the departures terminal of the San Antonio International Airport.
The Korean, Vietnam and Gulf War veterans were getting ready to board their “honor flight,” an all-expenses paid trip to Washington D.C. to tour the military and war museums and monuments and visit Arlington National Cemetery.
For the lone woman in the group, this trip has been a long time coming.
“I’d like to see the women’s memorial. They were building it when I was stationed in D.C. and now it’s complete with my name in it, and I want to go see it,” Eleanor Frish said.
The Military Women’s Memorial was completed in 1997 to honor the three million women who have served in the Armed Forces.
Frish was stationed in D.C. in the 1990s during one chapter of her 22 years in the U.S. Air Force. She also served in the Vietnam War, deployed to Thailand, Spain and England, and went onto work for the Defense Department in Europe.
She said she was one of the few women in the military back then, but she’s happy to see the force’s gender balance changing.
“It was something women didn’t do at that time, but I’m glad I did it, because I enjoyed it,” she said. “… Women are equal now, we were pioneers, and it was difficult because we most likely were becoming loners because there was only one of us.”
As for what made her join the Air Force? “Escape.”
“I have traveled everywhere and I have enjoyed it tremendously, and I wouldn’t trade it,” Frish said.
Her next trip is taking her to D.C. with the group Honor Flight San Antonio, a nonprofit organization that has now taken 506 local veterans to the nation’s capital.
Visiting the memorials
The organization takes 20 veterans at a time, one group in the spring and one in the fall each year.
For the two-day excursion each veteran is paired with a “guardian” who accompanies them throughout the trip along with other volunteer staff members. With a police, fireman and bagpipe escort the group marched through the airport, veterans in red and guardians in blue shirts.
Honor Flight San Antonio was founded in 2014 by Court van Sickler, a Vietnam War Air Force veteran who had previously served as a guardian for WWII veterans for Alamo Honor Flight, the first organization of the like in the city. When that organization ceased operations in 2013, Van Sickler decided to step up and start his own nonprofit, this time not just for WWII veterans, but also Korean and Vietnam era veterans.
This weekend’s flight will be van Sickler’s 22nd group he has taken to D.C. He says Honor Flight San Antonio is a “family affair,” both his wife and his daughter work with him.
He says the best part of these trips is the gratitude strangers show the group as they make their way around the city.
“It’s the other people that walk up to them and thank them, and they really get excited when young young students or young kids do it, that gives us that’ve been around a while a good feeling,” Van Sickler said.
San Antonio Airport Public Relations Manger Tonya Hope had the chance to experience the flight as a guardian in 2019.
“It was probably one of the most amazing times in my life,” Hope said.
Though the trip was just getting started, for a father-son duo on the flight even the short time in the airport had exceeded their expectations.
“I’m 90 years old, and this is the best I’ve ever been treated,” Air Force veteran Noe Guerra said. “I’ve never been treated this way, it’s never been this good.”
Guerra comes from a military family, between him and his two older brothers they have served in WWII, Korea and Vietnam. It was not a surprise when his son Daniel Guerra followed in his footsteps and joined the Air Force. Now they get to enjoy the honor flight together.
“I think more than anything, just to be able to be there with my father for one, and to see the memorials. I’m real interested in seeing the USAA monument. … Our names are on there, I actually checked already online,” Daniel Guerra said.
The USAA national military monument was built for the country’s 250th anniversary, written on it are the names of millions of veterans who served in the U.S. military.
His dad said it’s an “honor” to be able to go on this trip with his son, but there’s one more person he wishes was here with them.
“My wife passed away a little over a year ago,” Noe Guerra said. “I sort of wished she would be able to go with me in this one.”
The San Antonio Report’s military and veterans coverage is supported by Report for America.
