John "Gene" Craig was a crypto officer aboard the USS Mississippi when it was decommissioned, making him responsible for destroying all classified material on the ship.
During Phillips Cirullo's time in the Navy, he served aboard three different vessels. The majority of his time came on the brand new USS Enterprise, the first-ever nuclear powered aircraft carrier.
After four years of active duty in the Navy beginning in 1963, Thomas Chambers went on to serve 29 more as a member of the Reserves.
On August 7, 1969, Corpsman Richard Campbell's medical training, and valor, rose to the occasion.
Terry Cable's tour of duty in Vietnam included time aboard the USS Satyr, a vessel equipped to repair the boats that patrolled Vietnam’s rivers and canals.
Jim Zwit calls it the driving force of his life. His memories, and his respect for the memories of the eight fellow soldiers killed one evening in Vietnam are too important to be anything else but the impetus behind the major mission in his life.
Howard Edgar Tweddle, Jr. was born on March 8, 1943, and grew up in Marion, Ohio. During high school, he discovered he could sing.
Three times Gary Nelson has traveled to Washington D.C. with Honor Flight Chicago, each time accompanying a World War II veteran on this journey of thanks. The next HFC flight on August 7th, 2019, will be Nelson’s fourth, but this time it will be different. This time, he’s the veteran being thanked.
At his company compound in Vietnam, Charles Luhan, Jr., would fly the City of Chicago flag (which has four blue stars) when he had the chance. When he did this, his company’s compound would receive unusually more rocket attacks than normal. The company commanding officer told Charles, “Can you take down that four-star flag, they think you’re a General.”
Barbara Lloyd was born into a family with a history of serving our country. Impressed with her brother, Ken’s, travels in the Navy, Barbara became “crazy about the Navy” which planted the seed of her serving in the military.
While growing up on the west side of Chicago and attending Austin High School, Tom never imagined he would spend his 21st birthday serving in the Army in Vietnam.
Growing up, Sylvester Dziedzic didn’t have a family dog. However, when he joined the Army in 1965, he developed a specialty as a Military Police (MP) Sentry Dog Handler and served in that role during the Vietnam War.
On his Honor Flight application, Mr. Yates states he was an Army photographer in Korea, an understatement indeed.
“Welcome to Tan Son Nhut. We are under attack, everybody prepare for a crash landing.” Those were the first words Capt. Clyde Wilson and his fellow officers heard from their pilot as they arrived in Vietnam in 1968.
Jim Wightman knows he is one of the lucky ones. He spent his entire Army deployment in Korea during a time when many troops were being shifted to Vietnam, allowing him to dig deep into much of the Korean culture.
When Bob Vogeltanz volunteered for the Air Force three days shy of his 19th birthday, he did not know he would learn a highly specialized skill that would take him halfway across the world to Thailand during the height of the Vietnam War.
Don Tollefsen went from being a garbage man working in Cicero, Illinois, to being part of a Floating Battalion in the South China Seas.
Terry Schmidt had a long and successful Navy career, with many years of recruiting for the Navy Reserve, but the times he remembers the best are his two tours on a destroyer off Vietnam.
Bob Misevich was awarded three Bronze Stars as an Army combat medic in Vietnam, where he served during the 1968 Tet Offensive.
While following in the footsteps of his grandfather, who served in the Navy during WWI, Vietnam War veteran Joseph Martinek eventually found himself assigned to USS Enterprise (CVN-65): the first nuclear powered aircraft carrier.