Uncle Warren Honored Part 2

From the Bloomington newspaper:

More than 100 WWII vets make trip to see monument

By Brady Gillihan 349-1420 bgillihan@heraldt.com April 23, 2009

More than a hundred World War II veterans from Monroe and surrounding counties were flown to Washington, D.C., Wednesday to see the memorial that was built to honor what they and their comrades did decades ago.
The Hoosier Honor Flight also took along 60 people to serve as guardians for the veterans, many of whom were in wheelchairs or otherwise in need of assistance for the one-day trip.
“It’s absolutely heartwarming to see the donations come in for these veterans to go do something that they otherwise would never have been able to do,” said Mike Pate, the treasurer of the committee organizing the trip. “Time and time again, these veterans told me today that they so appreciated what they were seeing.”
What they saw was the Arlington Cemetery, as well as the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. But the main focus of the trip was visiting the World War II memorial that was built some 60 years after the last bullet was fired in that conflict.
“The Vietnam vets have theirs, the Korean vets have theirs, but these guys, they just got theirs not long ago and it’s great that they got to see it,” Pate said. “And now that we’re home, we’re heading to the American Legion to feed them well. After which, I imagine they will sleep pretty well; it was a long day.”
Pate said a chartered airplane left the Monroe County airport with the veterans and their assistants Wednesday morning around 6 a.m. and returned to Bloomington about 8 p.m.

I've included some more pictures from those sent to me by Theresa and Kim. Looks like the vets went first class to D.C.!

Congratulations Uncle Warren!

Here is a somewhat dry, but good narrated video describing the WWII Memorial done not long after it was unveiled.