16 million american men and women who served in world war ii. in fact, today 1 out of every 4 americans over age 75 is a veteran. many of them are here today. they are surrounded by 56 beautiful granite columns meant to symbolize the 48 states at the time in addition to the seven u.s. territories and the district of columbia, which stood together in an unprecedented showing of wartime unity. by the time that memorial was dedicated in 2004, many of the veterans were too ill, too old, or too poor to travel to see it. the following year a man in ohio who worked with aging veterans decided to do something about that. he asked one of his patients if it would be all right if he personally flew him to d.c. to see the memorial. that man broke down, cried, and accepted the offer. that moment led to the founding of what is now known as the honor flights network.
said, was look, civilized nations of the west, look what you did 40 years ago when you held together, joined together. you defeated a terrible tyranny called hitler s germany. so that s what the speech is. underneath that reagan was really saying to all the gathered leaders of the west who were there that day, guys, look what your parents and grandparents did. if we hold together as they did, where going to defeat together the tyranny of our time. and that is soviet communism. so by lauding the world war ii generation reagan was also trying to inspire those who now still had to hold together. the berlin wall had not fallen. to push that wall over. so he very consciously i think used that speech to say look what we did last time, we can still do it. the words are so beautiful when you hear him speak them. and of course he was known as the great communicator. and you helped with that. you helped with the wording. did he ever come back and say, i
organization that records stories from combat veterans. and we can certainly see why you ve chosen to do that. just meeting folks like the major makes you stop and lament the fact that there will come a time on this earth sadly in the not too distant future where we are no longer able to talk to these guys one on one. absolutely. we re losing our world war ii veterans at a rate of one about every 90 seconds. and our mission is essentially to capture those stories before they re lost forever. when you as somebody who s immersed himself in doing this near full-time, what do you take away from them? from our first two guests we heard that it s like a film strip, it s like a movie, to think back on what happened, and both of them talked about wanting to be remembered for their sacrifice and understanding that their life was worth something. one of the things i want to assure dr. heilman and major geiger is that there are younger folks who care. we ve got awhole foundation and a tea
because i am 91 years old. i m just one of the lucky ones. i made it home. went to arlington and you saw all the cemeteries. i count my blessings every day. i think the worst time i had was when we got attacked by german u-boats. i was only a kid of 16. kind of scared me a little bit. we have so many unknowns in there. it s just not one veteran. it s a number of them. everyone. we were all young. today we re all old. and we appreciate everything that s gone on. behind us and forward. just look forward to a brighter world today. well, the goal of the honor flight network is to make sure every single veteran, whether from world war ii, the korean
on the planet at the time. and you know, we did one-year tours. you didn t do a one-year tour in world war ii. you were in until you were wounded, killed, captured or the mission was complete. it s a very different dynamic. it s not to take away from the tours of today. but it was a theater, you were in for the duration unless something happened. and you were far away without the ability really at all to communicate with your loved ones back at home back in the day. a very difficult, different situation for both the service member and the family. i m able to go to iraq or afghanistan and dial up skype at a local call center and call back to my family. my grandmother, whose husband was in a postworld war ii he was in world war ii but after the fighting was in germany for two months before she heard from him and that was a written letter, and they were married two months before that. i mean, the time, the patience, the uncertainty, the anxiety that comes with it is at a whole other