Honor Flight Telethon earns thousands for southern Colorado veterans

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- Over $80,000 was raised in the first-ever Honor Flight Telethon. The Honor Flight program sends veterans to Washington, D.C. on an all-expenses-paid trip to visit the monuments that were built in their honor.

From sunup to sundown, volunteers took calls from people who wanted to thank Southern Colorado veterans.

"It's a lifelong commitment that these veterans have made," Ellen Gensicki, a volunteer who currently serves in the Army, told KRDO13. "We try to make it so they're not forgotten, and that they know they're not forgotten about."

There's a two-to-three-year waiting list with over 300 veterans, but the experience is worth the wait. Especially for people like Sharon Nolan, who went on an Honor Flight as a guardian, and saw what it meant to her father.

"He had so much guilt, and shame, and anger, and you name it, about his service in Vietnam. And to be able to go on this trip and be with his people, his brothers, and they all speak the same language… it was so profound for him," Nolan said.

The trip ends with the welcome home that many veterans, especially Vietnam vets, never got. They get letters from family and strangers alike thanking them for their service. It's the first time many of them have experienced that.

"I was very touched that I got to see so many tears come out of my dad's eyes because for so long he had a wall up," Nolan said. "And to be able to read these letters of appreciation to say thank you for your service, it just poured out of him; the emotion. To be able to share that with him is a memory I will cherish forever. We just lost my dad in June. And I feel very blessed."

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