Rich Parker
Bob Cervantes
Glenn Ward Jr.
Sonny Brichta
Aaron Cushman
It was 2:30 a.m. on a Wednesday, and Keith S. Brin was thinking about his grandfather.
Brin, the Lake County circuit clerk, was taking a car service to Midway International Airport for a flight to Washington, D.C., on June 4.
He had signed up as a volunteer for Honor Flight Chicago, an organization that flies World War II veterans to Washington free of charge to see the war memorials, particularly the World War II memorial which opened in 2004.
It’s a day that brings the past to life.
During the trip, every veteran is assigned a guardian — a volunteer companion with whom he or she spends the day.
Some are medics, assigned to veterans with health needs. Most, like Brin, are just people who want to help.
Of the 86 veterans on the trip, 27 were accompanied by relatives — mostly their adult children. Many of the other volunteers have signed up to honor a deceased veteran family member.
Brin’s grandfather did not fight in World War II. He was a prisoner in Auschwitz and later Dachau, remaining there until American soldiers liberated the camp.
As the car traveled toward Midway in the early morning darkness, Brin thought about a trip he took to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington with his grandfather 15 years ago.
He recalls the sadness of looking at photos of concentration camp prisoners and then looking at his grandfather. The number that was tattooed on his grandfather’s arm is also permanently in Brin’s mind.
“I think I’m going to have a similar experience,” he said on the way to the airport. “I’ve seen the World War II memorial. I’ve seen (the Iwo Jima memorial). I’ve seen it all. But I’ve never experienced it with someone who was there. A veteran. I just don’t think there’s going to be anything like it.”
The trip prompts that reaction for guardians and veterans alike as the flights run monthly from April to October. Brin’s trip was the organization’s 56th; the 57th is Wednesday.
Honor Flight Chicago has taken 4,875 veterans to Washington in 56 trips. About 22,000 World War II veterans are still alive in the Chicago area. The U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs estimates that 555 veterans die per day.
Expenses — $600 per veteran per flight — are covered by private donors, while the guardians pay their own $500 plane tickets. The challenge is finding the vets.
For that, the group has created a spinoff organization called Operation Locate a Hero. Brin is one of several members of the Lake County court system who plugs Honor Flight Chicago at any public speech, slipping in 30 seconds here and 60 seconds there.
The group has a number of grass-roots methods for locating veterans. They distribute fliers at doctor’s offices, libraries and senior centers. And they speak at Chicago Bulls and Bears games.
“If we don’t find them soon, there’s no more to be found,” said Brin, whose grandfather died in 2010. “They really are getting to the point where they are concerned that we’re running out of time.”
The 10-hour day in Washington features four stops: the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial, which depicts the flag raising at Iwo Jima; the National World War II Memorial; one stop that includes the Korean War Veterans Memorial and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial; and the National Air and Space Museum.
For the guardians, it is a day to listen.
For the veterans, it is a day to heal.
‘I had the hate’
In October 1944, two months after his 20th birthday, Aaron Cushman bombed Europe.
A student at the University of Illinois, Cushman interrupted his studies to enlist in the Army Air Corps, the precursor to the Air Force. He enlisted in part because of the patriotic fervor and sense of duty among Americans of his age and generation.
But Cushman’s desire to fight was greater than peer-influenced patriotism.
“I had the hate,” he said about Nazi Germany. “I hated what the Germans were doing. It didn’t make sense. These were civilians and they were murdering these people.”
Like the rest of the veterans, Cushman arrived at Midway around 3:30 a.m. to meet his guardian, Brin.
“I guess there has to be a first for everything,” Cushman told Brin when he sat in the wheelchair. “This is the first time in my life that I’ve ever been in a wheelchair and I hope it’s the last.”
The mandatory wheelchair is one small logistical piece of Honor Flight Chicago’s advance planning for the day. At the hub is president Mary Pettinato, who coordinates the scores of airport volunteers per trip, along with 80 to 95 veterans and an equal number of guardians.
Brin and Cushman became fast friends at Midway as each story from Cushman, 89, made Brin, 42, shake his head in disbelief.
After earning a journalism degree at University of Illinois and completing his service in Korea, Cushman started a public relations company — his clients included Sammy Davis Jr., Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin and the Three Stooges. From 1975 to 1981, he also was a part owner of the Chicago White Sox.
As Cushman and Brin spoke, other veterans talked to each other, guardians and volunteers.
One was 91-year-old Sonny Brichta, a sergeant in the Army Air Corps stationed in the Pacific. He was 19 in October 1942 when he entered the service and was in the Philippines in August 1945 preparing to invade Japan when the U.S. dropped the bomb on Hiroshima.
Brichta, who went into advertising after the war, enlisted out of a sense of enthusiasm and moral duty. During his deployment, his outlook changed.
“I think you’re scared from the day you start,” he said.
Almost 70 years later, he still gets scared. A feeling of what he called “general nervousness” pervades his days.
“I killed people,” he said. “Being Jewish, you think of the Ten Commandments — ‘Thou shalt not murder’ — and sometimes it was very hard. I have a lot of guilty feelings still.”
So much, in fact, that he once discussed the guilt with his rabbi.
“That really didn’t count,” his rabbi told him. “That wasn’t murder. You were in the service and that’s what it was about.”
Brichta’s not so sure.
“I’m disappointed that we keep fighting,” he said. “The first world war was to end all wars, supposedly. The second world war — well, we were attacked and had to fight.
“But in all of these other little things — I don’t know if we belonged in Korea. I don’t know if we belonged in Vietnam, Grenada, all these places. We police the world. Maybe we should. Maybe we shouldn’t.”
Soon, it was time to board.
At 6:55 a.m., the plane took off. The veterans cheered and clapped. They were on their way.
Heavy hearts
Glenn Ward Jr. entered Dulles International Airport happy to be alive.
The 90-year-old Chicagoan was 20-years-old on D-Day, which he spent in the English Channel facilitating the movement of dead bodies and injured soldiers back to England from Omaha Beach.
As a black soldier, he faced regular prejudice, even from the men he was supposed to assist.
“They’d look up and see black guys and say, ‘I don’t want them carrying me,’” Ward said. “Their legs were blown off, (and) they still managed to have this hatred.”
Ward learned to release his bitterness toward people who, he said, “couldn’t help it.” What he could not release was his anguish over witnessing so many corpses.
“I couldn’t see the wounds on them,” he said. “I don’t know how they died. No one told me. We were just on deck looking at the bodies. It’s a little heartrending. They were my age. But they were just lying there.”
That anguish snuck up on him four years ago. He was riding with one of his three daughters when, without realizing it, he put his hand to his chest. His daughter noticed and immediately changed her course for the University of Chicago Medical Center.
“What are you doing?” he asked her.
“I saw you grab your heart area,” she said.
“That’s crazy,” he responded. He felt fine. Tests were negative. He then realized the problem: It was June 6, the anniversary of D-Day.
“That’s the first essence of any kind of post-traumatic presence,” he said. “My heart just got so heavy. All those years passed and no problem. I guess I felt something for the guys that I saw that didn’t make it.”
‘Guys who are not here’
In 2004, 50 years after the Iwo Jima memorial opened, the World War II memorial was built to commemorate all of the war’s fighting men and women, rather than just those in the Pacific. By that time, there were a little more than 4 million World War II veterans alive.
Today, that number is down to 1 million.
The Honor Flight group’s first stop was at the Iwo Jima memorial, where the Marine Corps’ silent drill team performed.
Next was the World War II memorial and a crowd of at least 150 clapping supporters, among them U.S. Sens. John McCain and Joseph Donnelly.
When Ward stepped off the bus, he was greeted by another familiar face.
“Hi dad,” said his daughter who lives nearby in Alexandria, Va.
“I can’t believe you’re here!” Ward exclaimed.
His daughter was the latest in the day’s endless run of surprise greeters. There was no fanfare when he returned home in early 1946. He moved to Tennessee to work at his father’s lumberyard while determining his next move.
As Ward, his daughter and his guardian explored the memorial space together, Cushman and Brin stood near the rim of the pool space. Cushman had remained unemotional at the Iwo Jima memorial.
At the World War II memorial, he was solemn as he thought about his friends — “guys who were shot down, guys who are not here,” he said.
He paused and choked up.
“Empty beds.”
His thoughts transitioned to happier moments.
“The officers had scotch and gin and light beer. But you could not drink the scotch.”
The scotch, he said, was held by the officers, 30 days at a time.
“At the end of the month, the guys who were still alive would take the scotch out and would send the trucks out to the countryside,” he said. “They would come back loaded with women. Absolutely jammed with women. And then we would have a big party. Then we got to drink the scotch.”
He drank the scotch four times.
‘I’m not a hero’
Steve Silosky, 91, stood at the Korean War memorial, brushing his hand against the black granite wall.
He served in the Pacific as an Army sergeant during World War II with an amtrac battalion, amphibious tanks that delivered supplies to Marines and Marines to battle. Silosky saw action in three battles, including Okinawa.
“You train so hard, and you’re really not afraid,” he said. “As a soldier, you don’t think of being hit or killed. Everybody might be killed except for you, you know what I mean?”
Silosky was drafted, though like many drafted men he was preparing to enlist. He was happy he fought. He was happy he lived.
Upon returning home, the government gave him $1,500 — “severance pay, or whatever you want to call it” — and he returned to Grindstone, Pa.
There were no parades.
“It’s not like we were in New York,” he said.
Throughout the day, a number of veterans made a distinction between the justness of their war and subsequent ones. Silosky makes an effort to understand the mindset of current soldiers.
“I know one thing,” he said. “If you get in the service and you train hard, you want to fight. You want to do that.”
He looked away.
“I’m not a hero,” he said. “Anybody who made it back is not a hero.”
Heading for home
At the Air and Space Museum, the sight of the Enola Gay — the B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb — left Cushman nearly speechless.
“I flew that,” he said, referring to the B-29 he flew in Korea.
That left Brin speechless.
After the museum visit, it was time to start the trip home.
At Dulles, the group watched 1940s-style revelers in zoot suits and patterned dresses dancing to the “Dipsy Doodle” by Tommy Dorsey.
Next, the dancers invited veterans to join them. Silosky and Cushman both skipped out of their seats to dance with the ladies.
“My God, look at him go!” Brin said, watching Cushman spin and dip his partner.
Near the dance routine was Bob Cervantes, 87, and Rich Parker, 83.
They met earlier in the day at the Lincoln Memorial when Parker spotted a patch on Cervantes’ hat that features a lightning insignia for the 25th Infantry Division of the Army.
“Twenty-fifth infantry!” Parker shouted as his guardian wheeled him past Cervantes. “Twenty-fifth! Twenty-fifth!”
They did not know each other in battle but clutched each other’s hands, refusing to let go, gently shaking and staring at each other and talking and repeating to themselves, “Twenty-fifth. Twenty-fifth.”
The two strangers were now friends, throwing one-liners at each other as they waited for the flight back to Chicago.
The music stopped and the plane was ready. Cushman and Brin boarded.
“The thing that impressed me the most was ... the fact that when we got off the plane (at Dulles) all those people were there, and they came up and said ‘Thank you.’ I must have been hugged by 20 different ladies,” Cushman said.
He recalled being approached by a group of high school girls while he and Brin took a break eating ice cream following their walk past the Vietnam memorial. Each girl approached him, thanked him and kissed him on the cheek.
“That really touched me more than all the rest,” he said. “It was such a warm feeling.”
Cushman boarded the plane for Chicago, thinking his day was over. Little did he know, the best was yet to come.
Read the conclusion in part two.