Honor Flight: Celebrating America’s Veterans

Gr 2-4–With the same reverence that characterizes their Twenty-One Steps: Guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Gottesfeld and Tavares pay tribute to our veterans and to the volunteer organization that offers free “Honor Flights” to the war memorials in Washington, D.C., for the oldest still living who served in World War II, Korea, or the Vietnam era. Assuming the voice of a generic vet—“Call me Kilroy. Squid, G.I. Joe, Airman, Jarhead, WAC, or WAVE”—Gottesfeld describes how the Honor Flight Network provided transportation, a guardian, and a tour of sites in the National Mall and Arlington. Exchanging waves with a group of former “Rosie the Riveters,” the narrator pauses at each memorial to remember and reflect (sometimes pointedly: “World War II, a circle of unity. I recalled a nation of shared purpose,”) Tavares depicts guardians and their charges, most of the latter in and out of wheelchairs, taking the tour and afterward gathering beneath the Lincoln Memorial to talk and bond. Having tearfully read a packet of appreciative letters from friends and schoolchildren on the flight home, the narrator lands to the sort of warm, celebratory welcome that, he remarks, “many of us were denied all those years ago.” Still—“This is why we had served,” he concludes. “It was an honor.”