Brothers receive special gift on Honor flight
By Ethan Williams, Max McKenna
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MARION, Illinois (WPSD) — Ninety veterans returned to Southern Illinois from Washington, D.C., on a Tuesday honor flight after a delay Monday night.
The honor flight takes veterans to see the memorials on display in Washington.
Hundreds of people packed the Veterans Airport of Southern Illinois in Marion on Tuesday to welcome the veterans home.
While many of the veterans on the flight would call themselves brothers in arms, a small group of them are connected by more than just their experiences.
“I’m just one of the five that are still alive, and there were two more brothers that had previously passed away,” Vietnam veteran Arthur Winkeler said. “My brother Frankie was a year and a half behind me. He followed me up into the Air Force, and then our brother Virgil came along.”
Five of the seven Winkeler brothers, who served in the Vietnam War, made the trip to Washington for the first time this year. The other two, Frankie and Virgil, passed away before they could make the trip.
The crew with the Honor Flight Network surprised the brothers with folded American flags accompanied with their late brothers’ pictures and name tags to bring with them as they passed through the monuments.
The brothers said it was very important to them that they got to bring their fallen brothers with them.
“We have to because we’ve always been together, and we’re not letting them go,” Ralph Winkeler said. “They’re going to stay with us. That’s the way it is.”
The veterans got a tour of Washington and many of the memorials on display.
“We saw all the war memorials: the Second World War memorial, the Vietnam Wall, the First World War, and Iwo Jima,” Leonard Winkeler said.
Other veterans said the trip was a big help to them.
“It was awesome,” Vietnam veteran Gary Nease said. “All of it together kind of brought a lot of closure for me because of the past.”
The best part of the trip for some veterans was coming back and seeing their families greet them at the Veterans Airport in Marion.
“It gets emotional,” Arthur Winkeler said. “You think I’m tough? I can stand this stuff because I’m a big old guy. This made me cry all the way through.”
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