Tucked into a gathering room in a corner of Terminal 4 at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport are a bunch of men and women wearing gold shirts. Having breakfast, talking about anything and everything. While most everyone else in the airport is hustling to their gate, this group over 50-strong laugh without a care in the world.
Honor Flight Arizona was an hour or so from its second departure of the spring season, and with it some 25 military veterans – each with a companion – on a quick crosscountry flight to Washington, D.C. There the nonprofit organization will lead the group on a tour of military memorials around the Capitol, including those dedicated to honor each war.
These veterans lived through it, including 95-year-old Dave Fairbanks, of Fountain Hills, who served in the Army at the tail end of World War II and the beginning days of the Korean War. He grew up near Ann Arbor, Michigan, and will be making his first trip to D.C. since as a schoolteacher he took a class there for a field trip in 1964.