Great River Honor Flight Announces 75th Mission

To Begin The 2025 Season

The Great River Honor Flight Board of Directors announced that the first of five planned flights for 2025 #75, will take place on Thursday, April 17th out of John Wood Community College in Quincy. A total of 34 veterans will take part on this trip. Of them, 26 served during the Vietnam era and the remaining 8 served before or after Vietnam. They represent Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Army National Guard and Reserves.

This will be the 75th mission overall for local veterans since the program started serving the Tri State region in 2010. Since then, 2,381 local veterans who served in WWII, Korea, Vietnam and between those conflicts have previously participated in this program. The 35 veterans on this flight, which includes one woman, come from Illinois (Adams, McDonough, Hancock, and Schuyler counties), Missouri (Marion, Pike, Ralls, Schuyler, Lewis, St. Charles, and Audrain counties), plus Iowa (Lee and Des Moines counties) plus one veteran from Johnson County in Kansas and one from Duval County in Florida. The veterans served in a number of roles among them Combat Engineer, Platoon Sergeant, Welder, Machine Gunner, Cook, Postal Clerk, Long Distance Communications, Aviation Structural Mechanic, Preventive Medicine, Instructor of Electronics, Military Police, and Fuel Specialist. A complete list of the veterans and their hometowns is included at the end of this News Release.

The departure and return on the April 17th mission will be from the campus of John Wood Community College in Quincy. The trip will follow the itinerary that has been so successful over the past 16 years. It includes a 2:15AM departure for a bus ride to Lambert Field in St. Louis where they will board their flight to Baltimore and then on to DC where they will visit the Vietnam Wall, Korea Memorial, WWII Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Iwo Jima Memorial, Air Force Memorial, Navy Memorial and see the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery and make a stop at the Women’s Memorial in Arlington for a recognition of the one female veteran on the mission. The veterans will then head to Reagan International Airport for their return flight back to St. Louis. A charter bus will bring them back to the JWCC Basketball Arena for a rousing homecoming. The expected arrival time back in Quincy will be around 10:30PM.

Great River Honor Flight was chartered on Veterans Day 2009 with its first flight scheduled on April 13, 2010. Our goal remains to honor the total number of local veterans who served our country with a FREE trip to Washington DC.

To date Great River Honor Flight, the Tri-States’ hub of the Honor Flight program has flown 2,381 local Veterans to Washington D.C. since it was established in 2009. This trip will increase that total to 2,415. Great River Honor Flight, a Missouri Nonprofit Corporation established in October of 2009, was created solely to honor America’s veterans that live in our area for all they have sacrificed by providing, free of charge, transportation to Washington D.C. to visit the memorials dedicated to honor their service and sacrifices.

For additional information, contact Carlos Fernandez at csfernandez1951@gmail.com or

Great River Honor Flight

PO Box 3723

Quincy, Illinois 62305