Villages Honor Flight will be taking it’s innovative “Flightless Honor Flight” program on the road Tuesday, Oct. 18 to the VFW Veterans Village at Fort McCoy.
The “flightless” program was developed to enable those veterans who are unable to make the long 22 hour trip to Washington, D.C. to have the same type of experience by means of a “virtual” mission, involving a multi-media presentation made from Village Honor Flight’s library of videos from the previous 29 missions. Although it is a simulated virtual flight, this Flightless Honor Flight will be complete with an Honor Guard, TSA security agents, Southwest Airlines personnel, etc. Our program for these flightless missions that are held away from The Villages is called “Missions at a Distance” (MAAD), administered by Gary Kadow as the program director.
Barbara Hambright, who is the Flight Director for this mission, will lead the Villages Honor flight team who will be honoring each of the 35 veterans and the widows of 3 veterans who recently passed away. The Honored Veterans will each have a personal guardian from Villages Honor Flight to accompany them for the day as they “fly” to Washington via Orlando and visit Arlington National Cemetery to witness the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns, view the Marine Corps Memorial, the Air Force Memorial and then finally the National Mall, where they will visit the WWII Memorial, the Korean War Memorial, the Vietnam Wall and several other monuments and memorials at the Mall.
The 35 veterans come from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and the Merchant Marine. All of these veterans reside at the VFW Veterans Village.
The event will begin at 10 a.m. and conclude about at about 3:30 p.m.
Although the public may not attend most of the event, which is limited to the veterans and their families, the public is very much encouraged to attend at the end of the afternoon, at approximately 2 p.m. for a big “Homecoming Welcome” for the veterans. They are encouraged to bring friends and neighbors, smiles and cheers, and flags to wave as these honored veterans return home from their simulated flight to Washington.
The VFW Veterans Village is located at 13005 NE 135th Street, Fort McCoy, FL which is located approx. 9.5 miles northeast of Silver Springs State Park. Note: Veterans Village is not on any GPS locator, but the directions are easy. Take Route 35 (Baseline Road) to Silver Springs Park at the corner of Route 40 (Silver Springs Road). Turn right on Rt. 40 and go 2.60 miles to Route 315 on the left. Turn left on Rt. 315 and go 9.5 miles to 135th Street, there will be a large sign for VFW Veterans Village telling you to turn right. After you turn right go to the end of the road and you will see the Avenue of Flags which is the entrance to Veterans Village.
