Fred Drexler, Founding Partner of Sulky of America and a member of the Franklin NC Rotary Club, has been strongly involved in a project that his Western NC Rotary District calls "Honor Air" (known as Honor Flight in some parts of the Country). This is a project that the Franklin Rotary Club participates in with many other Rotary Clubs in their District to locate and send as many World War 2 Veterans as they can, free of charge, to Washington DC to visit the National World War II Memorial that was completed in 2004. This Memorial honors the 16 million U.S. armed forces who served in WW II and the more than 400,000 who died in battle.

On October 31, 2009, for the second time this year, the Western NC Rotary District chartered a 145-seat US Air jet that accommodated 100 WW II Veterans and their volunteer assistants, called guardians, (at least 1 for every 3 Veterans) and other support staff and medical personnel including a Doctor. Thanks to financial help from Sulky of America, Fred Drexler's Rotary Club sponsored 12 of those Veterans and 4 Guardians.

Guardians who have made this trip with a planeload of Veterans say "Witnessing their emotions is what fuels our cause. When you see WW II veterans break down in tears because they had no idea how much this nation reveres, cherishes and loves them for what they've done, it really overwhelms them."

Fred urges you to locate a civic organization in or near your community and work with them to make this program happen in your area before it is too late. (Of the roughly 16 million Americans who served in the Armed Forces during the war, less than two million are still alive.)

Please read this article that was published in the NY Times on September 28, 2009:

Long-Belated Homecoming for World War II Veterans

By BERNIE BECKER, WASHINGTON - For Lawrence M. Hinsley, it was a celebration almost 65 years in the making. Mr. Hinsley, a Navy enlistee who served in the Pacific theater in World War II, says he was greeted with little pomp and circumstance when he returned home in late 1945.

But on a trip on Saturday to the World War II Memorial in Washington with a group of fellow veterans, Mr. Hinsley got a sort of a hero's welcome. His group was greeted with applause when they stepped off the airplane, their bus had a police escort to the Memorial, and they accepted the thanks of complete strangers while at the memorial. "This is our coming-home party," said Mr. Hinsley, who now lives in Tullahoma, TN.

Mr. Hinsley was one of an estimated 700 World War II veterans who came to Washington on Saturday through the help of the Honor Flight Network, a nonprofit that arranges free trips for the veterans to visit the memorial commemorating their service.

The idea for Honor Flight came from Earl Morse, who was a physician's assistant at a Veterans Affairs clinic in Springfield, Ohio, when the World War II Memorial opened in 2004.

"I would see my World War II veterans some three to six months later, and I'd ask them if they'd gone to see it," said Mr. Morse, a veteran of the Air Force and now the president of Honor Flight. "Three hundred of them, and not one of them had been to it. Reality set in. They were never going."

Mr. Morse started the program with the help of a pilot's club at a nearby Air Force base. Its first flight was in May 2005. But Honor Flight eventually outgrew smaller planes and switched to flying veterans commercially. It became the Honor Flight Network when it merged with HonorAir, a group started by Jeff Miller, a North Carolina man who uses charter planes to transport veterans to Washington.

Honor Flight now has about 85 regional hubs in 33 states, with each hub required to plan its own flights, do its own fund-raising, and find its own volunteers. The group flew about 135 veterans to the memorial in 2005. This year, it has already flown more than 10,000 there, and about 30,000 since the program's inception. (Of the roughly 16 million Americans who served in the Armed Forces during the war, about two million are still alive.)

Saturday's group was among the largest scheduled Honor Flight gatherings of this year, with groups from around 10 hubs arriving in the nation's capital.

Most of the groups that traveled to Washington this weekend planned to fly both in and out on Saturday - a grueling day for almost anyone, let alone a group filled with veterans well into their 80s and 90s, many of whom needed wheelchairs to get around. But the veterans were largely upbeat when they arrived at the memorial.

Many had already received a rousing welcome as they landed in the Washington area, getting applause and cheers as they came off the planes. "I don't get choked up too easily," said Dick Schoof, 85, who served as a meteorologist in the Army Air Corps during the war and now lives in Dothan, AL. "But that was just staggering."

Once they got to the memorial, the cameras started clicking, as the veterans posed for group photographs, both with and without former Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, who was badly wounded in World War II. Mr. Dole, who often greets Honor Flight groups, said he had met a couple of veterans who had also served in the 10th Mountain Division at this particular meet-and-greet. "It's great, just saying hello, swapping stories, joking around with each other," said Mr. Dole, flanked by his wife, Elizabeth.

In the end, the trip evoked a range of feelings from the veterans, from appreciation to Honor Flight to amazement that the group had gone to so much trouble. "What I can't figure out is why they'd ship an old man like me out here," said Donald Bernander, 84, of Greendale, WI. Still, Mr. Bernander, who said he got "shot up a couple of times" while serving in the Pacific, did not seem to mind the group's effort. "I'm being treated like a king," he said.

Joseph Cacioppo, an 83-year-old who fought at Iwo Jima and now lives on Long Island, said: "There's no way we can ever thank Honor Flight enough." But Chris Cosich, who leads the Long Island hub of Honor Flight, said the volunteers who pay their own way to accompany the veterans get quite a lot out of it as well. "It's an indescribable experience until you come, and it's still indescribable afterwards," said Mr. Cosich, who is a fitness-training director when he is not volunteering for Honor Flight. "It's one of the most moving things."

Mr. Hinsley, the veteran from Tullahoma, seemed to agree. "I'd seen pictures, but you've really got to be here to feel it," he said. "I've seen other memorials, but this means so much more. Just because it's a part of me."

Please read this excerpt from a CNN story the next week:

Washington (CNN) -- The aging veterans gingerly walk from the plane in the nation's capital. Some get pushed in wheelchairs. A brass band strikes up World War II era tunes. Strangers rise to their feet and clap their hands.

"Why are they doing this?" says Frank Bales, 86, a co-pilot on a B-24 during World War II. "I feel as humbled as a mouse."

Walter Victor was overwhelmed as he made his way through the crowd. "The chills came over me. Very seldom do you see something like that," says the 92-year-old army veteran.

"Honor Flight" took to the skies in May of 2005. Six planes flew 12 veterans. The next month, eight planes flew 16 veterans. Today, it operates like a volunteer airline, with 85 hubs in 33 states.

Instead of renting small planes, they charter Boeing jets, thanks to donations that keep the planes in the sky. So far, more than 30,000 veterans have experienced a visit to the memorial, courtesy of Honor Flight.

"Witnessing their emotions is what fuels our cause. When you see WWII veterans break down in tears because they had no idea how much this nation reveres, cherishes and loves them for what they've done, it really overwhelms them," Morse says.

In the days and weeks before each Honor Flight, an army of ground volunteers coordinates every detail of each trip -- from the buses that pick them up to the meals they eat.

Visit honorflight.org to find out more.