Public's support made Honor Flight possible
By Heather Thorstensen
hthorstensen@agrinews.com
Date Modified: 06/10/2010 2:40 PM
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LUVERNE, Minn. —Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie planted the idea of starting an Honor Flight hub in southwest Minnesota.
While visiting Rock County last October, he mentioned to Luverne Chamber of Commerce director Jane Wildung Lanphere that he'd soon be volunteering as a guardian on an Honor Flight, to help World War II veterans see their war's memorial in Washington, D.C.
Areas across the country work as hubs of the national Honor Flight network to send local World War II veterans to see their war's memorial in Washington D.C., free of charge.
Ritchie's visit got Wildung Lanphere thinking. She and her husband, Larry, wondered how they could get their area's veterans to Washington.
Southwest Minnesota didn't have an Honor Flight hub.
Some of the area's veterans had applied to fly with neighboring regions' hubs. The closest were in South Dakota, Rochester, St. Cloud and the Twin Cities.
As the idea to help local veterans spread, people in Nobles, Murray, Rock and Pipestone counties formed a 12-member executive committee.
"There wasn't a big plan for it," said Wildung Lanphere. They estimated the number of veterans in their communities and saw they could fill a plane with their four counties.
They met for the first time in late November with the intent of working with South Dakota's Honor Flight hub in Sioux Falls.
"They helped us get organized," said Wildung Lanphere. "We were going to have them organize and charter a plane for us and provide staff and pay for it. After we got started, there was just so much interest in the communities involved that we decided we had to go on our own."
The challenge was clear: Fundraising. They estimated it would cost $800 to send one veteran on a two-day Honor Flight. With the plane, meals, buses, hotels, and guardians — who pay their own way — the total cost could be anywhere from $120,000 to $136,000.
"We had no idea how long it was going to take to do fundraising, we didn't know how it would be embraced," said Wildung Lanphere.
They were met with amazing support.
Donations came from local businesses, schools, churches, residents as well as American Legion posts from all over the country.
US104 Highway Patrol Morning Show co-hosts Chad Cummings and Matt Widboom hatched a plan called the Deep Freeze Dip. They and Kirk Schelhaas of the Worthington Police Department agreed to jump into Lake Okabena in January to raise $5,000.
To their surprise, 40 people collected pledges and jumped with them. The promotion raised more than $43,000.
By the end of January, the executive committee had enough funds — $70,000 — to charter a plane. They became an official Honor Flight Network hub in February and reached their total fundraising goal before the flight with 110 veterans, from both insides and outside their four counties, left the airport in Sioux Falls April 30.
Terrie Gulden, chairman of the hub's executive committee, is a Vietnam War veteran. He wanted to support the Honor Flight because he can relate to World War II veterans, who didn't return home from the war with fanfare.
"We just went back to our lives, we did what we're supposed to do: Rebuild economies. The war ended and they never had a chance to get that out of their system. What the memorial is doing with them, it's a process of healing with these guys. People who have never talked about the war with their families, when they are out in Washington, D.C., they will sit down and share, not always with strangers, but when they're out there, they're not with strangers, they're with their comrades," he said.
Raising so much money to help the flight was beyond US104's Cummings' wildest imagination.
"We're losing World War II veterans at a rate of over 1,000 a day," Cummings said. "...You look at what World War II veterans did for our country, for us today, we wouldn't have anything if it wasn't for them in the war and doing that."
He accompanied the veterans in Washington as a guardian.
"It was an absolute honor and something I will never forget in my life," he said.