Because I live on Matinicus, where there is no regular ferry, and because I do a lot of stuff that involves going to the mainland, I spend a lot of time underfoot in the Penobscot Island Air office at the Knox County Airport. A few weeks ago, P.I.A. owner and pilot Kevin Waters told me that I ought to meet the new physician’s assistant on Vinalhaven, some guy named Earl Morse. I assumed at first that Kevin was thinking we’d talk about island medical care issues.

Not at all. Morse, it turns out, is a founder of the Honor Flight Network, a nationwide nonprofit that for nine years has sent veterans on all-expense-paid trips to Washington, D.C., to see their war memorials. That, as I was to discover, is just the beginning of what an Honor Flight trip can do.

On March 21, the first Honor Flight trip originating from Maine left the island of Vinalhaven.

Four veterans from that island and four helpers — called “guardians” in the Honor Flight lingo — began the three-day event by gathering for lunch with the students at the Vinalhaven School. I was lucky enough to be one of the guardians. Our group didn’t need a lot of guarding, though. Pretty much all we did was to offer to carry their luggage (which offer they refused), offer to push the oldest in wheelchairs (which they put up with only when absolutely necessary in the interest of full-on speed), and snapped photos of them with their own cameras.

Just the same, each Honor Flight veteran travels with an assistant to make the journey close to effortless. The Honor Flight Network ensures the trip is as easy as possible for the guests of honor, even for those of advanced age or in declining health.

Eldest in our little group was Leonard “Bud” Skoog, 86, a Vinalhaven native and former Maine State Ferry Service engineer who had served in the Navy during World War II.

Articulate and warm, Bud is one of those guys with whom it’s easy to fall into a conversation. Actually, everybody on this trip was like that. After a few hours it felt to me as though we’d all known each other for years. As the youngest in the group at 50, I soon felt like I had a bunch of new uncles. I hope they don’t mind me saying that.

Clarence “Cap” Conway served in the Air Force in Korea. Inclined to stop and chat with people everywhere he went, we all kept an eye out for Cap who could usually be found answering questions for some school kid or shaking the hand of some active duty service member in a crowd.

Our party also included two Vietnam veterans, Gordon “Bobo” Walsh, USMC (and later Army) and Fred Small, Army infantry, as well as Air Force veteran Alan Barker going along as guardian to Cap Conway.

Earl Morse also spent 21 years in the Air Force. As part of the pretrip activities at the Vinalhaven school, the war veterans were interviewed by high school history students.

The stories from Vietnam made a deep impact, in particular Small’s heart-wrenching description of the destruction of an orphanage after he and some fellow infantrymen had befriended the local children. I happened to overhear one student ask Walsh, who was in the Marine Corps in Vietnam and was later in the Army, about making friends in the service.

“Nobody ever does anything alone in the service. You need people. You’ve got to trust them and they’ve got to trust you.”

At one point Morse told Small, a career educator and a retired school principal who still substitutes on Vinalhaven, how “I encourage veterans to tell stories, because [young people] are going to learn about war one of two ways: either what they see on TV, or what comes out of your mouth.”

The Vinalhaven music teacher led the younger students in an assembly where they sang patriotic songs and she talked about the origins of the Star Spangled Banner.

“By Congressional order,” music teacher Michelle Wiley explained, “If a band is present, they are to perform the National Anthem first, and it’s supposed to be in the key of B-flat.” She smiled; “All these rock stars are doing it wrong.”

Wiley reminded the children that loving their country is about more than outward appearances.

“Flying the flag doesn’t make you a patriot. Participating in the process makes you a patriot.”

There would be flags aplenty, however; as soon as the last song was sung, the children hurried to stand outside the school, each with an American flag. Jeannie Conway, of Vinalhaven, who worked tirelessly to put many aspects of this trip together, and Terry Waters, wife of Penobscot Island Air owner Kevin Waters and one of the other guardians on the trip, rolled out a red carpet at the school entrance.

Principal Robb Warren, who also put a lot of effort into this project, got the children all in place; as the veterans left the school and boarded the school bus for the ride to the island airstrip, children and other islanders cheered, clapped, snapped photographs and waved their flags.

The trip hadn’t even started yet, but Fred Small was heard to comment, “This is a lot different than when we came home from ‘Nam!”

Penobscot Island Air, the local air service which flies mail and passengers to the islands, provided our flight to Portland; Southwest Airlines, which also donates seats to Honor Flight, carried us on to Baltimore/Washington International — Thurgood Marshall Airport.

We experienced friendly greetings, announcements about Honor Flight, applause and handshakes for the veterans everywhere. Upon arrival in Baltimore it immediately became clear that we were part of something much larger; Honor Flight groups from all around the country were coming together and it seemed like everybody in the airport knew why we were there.

The outpouring of respect and affection made for an emotional moment for more than one of the veterans. Honor Flight volunteers throughout the busy airport welcomed and directed travelers, and soon we were comfortably ensconced in the airport Hilton. Jim McLaughlin, of the Honor Flight Network, gave us all the run-down on the full day ahead. A whole busload of veterans and guardians affiliated with Snap-on Tools joined the cluster of small groups and individuals from around the country. Snap-on is a corporate sponsor and encourages veterans associated with that company to make the trip.

On Saturday, March 22, two tour buses left the hotel, taking us first to the World War II Memorial, where Morse began an enthusiastic and animated description of each part of the plaza. He soon had a large cluster of random tourists and schoolchildren listening to his talk, as he turned out to be an excellent tour guide. The World War II memorial is a true history lesson, and the presence of Bud Skoog added to the experience for several students on school field trips who were eager to meet a World War II vet. Bud enjoyed all the handshakes, and got a warm hug from one of the teenagers.

At the World War II memorial the vets were also presented with a flag that had flown over the Capitol (we were first told it was the White House, so hopefully I’ve understood this correctly).

Too many Americans neglect to even think about the Korean War (and war it was, regardless of the official terminology).

The Korean War Veterans Memorial is something everybody should see, as it would resonate with anybody in any conflict who is pushed to their physical limit. The memorial has two major components. A polished black granite wall — in some ways similar to the Vietnam memorial — is etched with the faces of more than 2,500 service personnel.

These subtle but amazingly realistic images depict people serving in all branches, of every ethnicity, and doing every job. Reflected in the wall are 19 life-size bronze sculptures arrayed on the other side of the path, a group of servicemen climbing a hill — each obviously wet, cold, muddy, and exhausted. The reflection suggest 38 individuals; 38 a meaningful number here as it reminds us of the 38th parallel still dividing the Korean peninsula.

A floral wreath given by the Republic of Korea always decorates the memorial.

I was grateful to finally get a chance to see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. As a child during that conflict, my memories of those days are impersonal, formed by the six o’clock news rather than by family or friends who were there. Visiting the memorial in the company of two Vietnam vets was a privilege. The wall of names is a serious place; small children ask questions at full volume but everybody else seems to feel the need to keep their voice down. A few people stand perfectly still; one can only pass by respectfully, knowing what might be on their minds.

The 58,000-plus names on the memorial wall are listed chronologically. An aspect of this fact I found deeply moving was the reality that somebody was first, and somebody was last, on that somber list.

The Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial is more than the iconic black wall, however. There are also two bronze statues, one portraying three soldiers — not spiffy and starched, but disheveled and realstic—and another depicting three nurses, one cradling a critically injured serviceman, one looking for a helicopter, and one kneeling to tend to — what? We were told that originally the artist intended a baby, as the Army nurses cared for many southeast Asian children, but somebody thought that might be too graphic. Graphic it is, and it is easy to feel deep emotion looking at this work of art. Terry Waters is a nurse; together, we spent quite a bit of time at the Nurses’ Memorial.

We spent the whole day riding around Washington, D.C., as our wonderful bus driver pointed out important buildings and delivered us to other sites including the Navy and Air Force monuments, the Iwo Jima statue, the Women in Military Service memorial and the Seabees monument. At the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, we watched two rounds of the Changing of the Guard, with two Army wreath-laying ceremonies in between. School children participated in these very formal ceremonies, all carefully choreographed and precisely timed. Later, Earl Morse told us that he’d see about making arrangements for the Vinalhaven veterans, as a group, to offer a wreath sometime at the Tomb of the Unknowns.

Our tour bus was built with a lift to accommodate passengers in wheelchairs, and our new friend Gunny, a Marine from Missouri who had served in Vietnam and whose health wasn’t great, made good use of the equipment. Gunny wore his full dress uniform for the tour, and when somebody remarked on how nice it looked, he responded, “I thought I ought to wear it out of respect for my friends who didn’t make it.”

The day ended with supper in a restaurant followed by a few hours of socializing back at the hotel. At supper, Fred Small made some tender observations about the experience from the perspective of a Vietnam vet who, like so many of that era, was greeted on the home front with derision, insult, and disrespect. “I’m among friends.” Morse asked him to sum up the Honor Flight experience in one word, if possible. Small didn’t hesitate: “Relief.”

Out of uniform and relaxing at the hotel, Gunny told a couple of the volunteers, “I feel like this is the welcome home I didn’t get.”

For the men from Vinalhaven, the welcoming had barely begun. On the flight back to Portland the next day, each veteran was presented with a fat packet of notes and letters from local school children, family, and friends. This is “Mail Call,” and is an Honor Flight tradition. From one of the letters:

“…I am happy to write to you… I’m very proud of you for fighting for our country. Everybody is. Your stories about the war were sad but they were a realization to me about how scary it was. I’m really happy you get to go on this trip. I can’t imagine what you had to go through. Thank you for your service…”

Once again, we enjoyed a scenic trip over the islands and peninsulas of the Maine coast as Penobscot Island Air flew us all from Portland to Vinalhaven. The real world didn’t stop for our trip, of course: in between the two small planes landing with the returning veterans, a med-evac call was made. The first plane landed with Terry and I, we got off, and shortly thereafter Vinalhaven’s ambulance brought somebody who needed to get to the mainland. The first pilot took off for the mainland with the patient and an EMT, and the second plane, the Cessna 208 Caravan with all the veterans, landed on the gravel strip. Children and other islanders once again waved their flags and clapped, and a banner reading “Welcome Home, Heroes” was unfurled. We tried again to manage the red carpet, despite the typical island mud.

Along the road from the airstrip to the American Legion Hall, the group was escorted by three fire trucks, the island ambulance, and many carloads of well-wishers. Somebody fired a black powder cannon as we passed, and as we all turned to look, offered a sharp hand salute. As we approached the Hall, flags and balloons decorated the little downtown. Inside the Hall, an impressive display of refreshments and a beautiful cake were waiting for the veterans. We stood in silence as the Star Spangled Banner was played; then, one of the EMTs, still in his neon yellow coat, rushed into the room and joined a couple of other fellows: they were Vinalhaven’s a capella group, “Phil ‘n the Blanks,” ready to sing.

A proper flag-folding ceremony was conducted with the flag that the men had been given at the World War II memorial, and it was presented to the Legion Post on behalf of the island. Then, it was time for lots of hugs, lots of cookies, and a reluctant goodbye from me to my new friends. Kevin the pilot was ready to fly me back to Matinicus.

This trip was a first for Maine; the Honor Flight Network is nine years old and has sent veterans to D.C. from most other states, but Maine had never sent a group before. These islanders hope to demonstrate that if they can get to the nation’s capital, given the logistics complexities of an island, most anybody can. Waters points out that the participation of other small air taxi operations around Maine would help enormously. When Honor Flight first started it was all about pilots; the earliest trips were local pilots carrying, and escorting, local vets to the memorials in Washington. Things have grown.

Earl Morse sees this as an urgent mission.

“If somebody calls up and says, ‘You can take my dad off the waiting list, he’s died,’ it feels like a failure.”

Morse would like to see every veteran who would like to make the trip—especially those who served in World War II and those are terminally ill—have the opportunity.

As much fun as we all had, nobody is under any delusions that war memorials are easy for everybody. Morse has watched quite a few veterans respond to their monuments. “Some Vietnam vets say they don’t want to go as a vet, don’t want to go to the memorial, but sometimes they will go as a guardian to a WWII vet. They’ll comfort the WWII vet as his memorial, and then later at the wall you’ll see the WWII guy with his hand on the shoulder of the Vietnam vet.”

The Honor Flight Network is already planning future trips from Maine. Honor Flight spends no money whatsoever on advertising.

“If we have any money we’re going to use it to fly veterans before they’ve died,” insists Morse.

Honor Flight relies on volunteers, contributions, corporate sponsorships, and word-of-mouth. If you know a war veteran who would like to make this trip, if you can make a contribution, or for more information, please check www.honorflight.org.

Eva Murray lives on Matinicus