Ninety-six-year-old Henry W. Clark is counting down the days.
The old ball cap he usually wears, the one with the faded gold lettering above the brim, is gone — replaced with a brand new one. He has a pair of creased black pants picked out and a white shirt. He is giddy with anticipation.
It’s as if Clark, who lives in Harvey, has taken a youth-restoring elixir.
Doug Meffley has seen the condition many times.
“These veterans are instantly de-aged 50 to 70 years and become teenagers and 20-year-olds again in each other’s presence,” said Meffley, co-director of Honor Flight Chicago.
One of those flights is set to depart from Midway Airport on July 12 for 100-plus veterans to travel to Washington, D.C., to see memorials dedicated to the warriors of World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars, among other stops.
Clark will be the only World War II veteran on board. Honor flights have departed from Midway 109 times since 2008.
“Of those flights, we’ve only ever had two that did not have a single World War II veteran on them, and that was last month and September 2022,” Meffley said.
It’s the “march of time,” he said.
Of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II, only about 167,000 were still alive as of 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
Sometime in the not-so-distant future — perhaps next year or the following year — the last of the veterans who helped save the world from the Nazis will board a plane bound for the nation’s capital.
“It’s going to be a very sad day for us and for the country,” Meffley said.
Why are these trips so important?
“When you think about World War II, you think about the pictures: Times Square and the kiss ... and you think of pictures of ships coming with sailors all over them. But the vast, vast majority of our World War II veterans came home to little to no fanfare, went home, went back to work,” Meffley said.
So for Clark and his stepdaughter, Dorothy Neal of Country Club Hills, the time is now. She filled out an application in May for her Army veteran stepfather to take the flight. She got a call back about a week later.
“He counts down the days until we get on the flight,” said Neal, 55. “We need to spend a little bit more time showing them how grateful we are for them.”
Clark has good days and bad days.
“As long as I’ve got somebody by my side, I can handle it,” he said.
It will be his first trip to Washington, D.C., his stepdaughter said.
Clark, who was born in Mississippi, was drafted just days before the war ended. He ended up in France then Germany, where he was in charge of supplying fuel for U.S. military trucks.
“I made it from buck private to sergeant. So I figure I did good in two years,” he said.
The Rev. George Kane, a retired Catholic priest living in Schaumburg, is expected to be on next week’s flight, too. He’s a year older than Clark, but he didn’t enter military service as a chaplain until the Vietnam War because he was in the seminary. Kane joined the Air Force because there had been a change in leadership in his parish, and he wanted to be his “own boss.”
Among other things, he counseled fighter pilots on their way to war in Vietnam. Sometimes, he’d make the walk to an airman’s home to tell the family their loved one wouldn’t be coming back.
He is, he said, a “stalwart Irishman.”
“At the Vietnam Memorial, I’ll be very interested in ... praying for [those who died], thanking God for them,” he said.
It’s going to be a hectic day for Kane, Clark and the others. They have to be at Midway for a 6:45 a.m. flight. Wheelchairs are made available for everyone — but many refuse them. After seeing the war memorials and stopping to eat, they head back to Chicago, arriving home about 8:30 p.m. The trip is paid for by donations.
On the plane, the warriors often revert to a language they haven’t spoken in decades. There’s an occasional bit of cussin’.
“The stories start flowing, the language they used in the military back then — that instantly comes back,” Meffley said. “It’s a long day. It’s an exhausting day. But these veterans are running on such adrenaline and such excitement, that they wouldn’t even notice.”
It hasn’t happened on the Chicago-to-Washington route, but a few years ago, a World War II veteran died on the plane ride home to Arizona. His son told organizers he couldn’t imagine a better ending to the old warrior’s life, Meffley said.
Clark said he’s been praying he’ll run into someone from his truck company. He hasn’t seen any of the “beautiful guys” since the war ended.
“I would love that more than anything,” he said.
To learn more about the honor flights, go to www.honorflightchicago.org.
