By Verna Slate, Williamson County Bureau
MARION, Ill. — Ninety veterans will board buses out of Marion this week, headed for a day most of them never expected to see: their names on a wall, their service in a memorial, their war given a place in the nation's capital instead of just a folder in a drawer.
Veterans Honor Flight of Southern Illinois says the group departs Monday for Washington, D.C., its 17th such mission, according to Southern Illinoisan Local. The trip takes veterans to visit memorials built to honor their military service.
Seventeen flights in, the organization is still doing the same simple math it started with: a day, a bus, a wall with a name on it. For a county that has sent generations of its sons and daughters to war, that arithmetic still adds up to something worth the fuel and the fundraising.
The stakes are plain enough. These are not young veterans. Every flight that gets made is one more that didn't get delayed too long.
filed from the courthouse steps, where the ghosts take good notes.
— Compiled from reporting by Southern Illinoisan Local.
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