Marianne Milarczyk

Marianne Milarczyk began volunteering with Honor Flight Chicago in 2014 at the urging of her mother-in-law, who already was a volunteer. Marianne’s grandfather served in WWII, and she quickly became hooked after attending her first Welcome Home. In addition to her role as a medical guardian on flight day, Marianne also has served as an ambassador and currently is a member of HFC’s medical review team.

“Every day I have to make the decision to go to work, or put my family first,” Marianne said about our current climate. “This is who I am, though. If you take (being a nurse) away and I’m just at home, then you take away who I am. These are sad, scary, hard decisions to make, but we wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Essential workers in the medical profession are doing the same juggling act as so many around the country with kids now permanently at home. Marianne’s children go through seven hours of homeschooling a day which she helps to administer, then it’s a little bit of sleep and off to work. Some nurses she works with have elderly parents they help take care of, so they are being sent home to isolate and protect their loved ones.

“Everyone’s life is upended right now,” Marianne says.

At her facility, there are a couple of COVID-19 units already set up. “It is like a war zone,” Marianne said. “I can’t stress it enough, do not buy masks. We have nurses brown bagging their masks and re-using them right now. We are being told that is safe to do, but we don’t know that for sure.”

With all of her experience volunteering with Honor Flight Chicago, Marianne brings her current situation into focus using an HFC lens.

“Yes, we are risking our lives” fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, she said, but it is “still much more mild than what our veterans went through. I never got to be part of the military and have always thought ‘what would that have been like.’ You always think about that camaraderie, and that’s what I feel here. Everyone who walks into that hospital in such a scary time in people’s lives is part of this team, and it’s pretty cool to be a part of. I feel so blessed to have this connection.”