PROVIDENCE — Roger Desjardins was 21 when he wore this dull green Army uniform in World War II.
He is now 98 years old, and when the North Providence veteran got dressed in the dark hours of the morning on Monday, the uniform still fit him.
4:58 a.m.
Early Monday at T.F. Green International Airport, Desjardins is the oldest veteran on Honor Flight Rhode Island, named “Freedom,” and he prepared to lead the start of their day-long journey to Washington, D.C., and back.
The 65 veterans gathered at the airport represented every branch of the military. Some served in World War II, others in Korea or during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Nearly two-thirds served in the Vietnam War. Some came to know one another long after their service, sharing the kinds of memories that only fellow veterans can understand. Honor Flight guardians escorted the veterans -- some were veterans themselves.
Frank Collins, of Cranston, and Navy veteran Jimmy Price, of Providence, both joined the Army when they were 17, and never forgot what it felt like when they returned from Vietnam. “It was a shame,” said Price, who was attending the flight as a guardian. “They called us ‘baby killers.’”
The memories of the Vietnam war are indelible, Collins said. He found it tough when he visited the Wall years earlier. The men anticipated that it would be hard again today. But they were with each other, and they were ready.
This is Honor Flight, by the Rhode Island Fire Chiefs Honor Flight Hub, was the only one touring the nation’s memorials and monuments on Juneteenth, and for these Black men, that made the flight extra significant. “It’s a beautiful feeling,” said former Marine Kenneth Turner, a Vietnam veteran. “It’s my Father’s Day gift.”
Turner, Price, and Collins were among 22 veterans from American Legion Post 69 in Providence, and some of the more than 20 Black veterans on this Honor Flight. The post service officer, Johanne Washington, wanted to make sure everyone on the flight understood the importance of Juneteenth. “It means a lot to me,” Washington said, “because when I came back from the service, there was no welcome, no nothing for us at all.”
They assembled in the dark outside the airport entrance, strangers about to share what many who’ve experienced it called “the best day of my life.” Some had wheelchairs and canes. One veteran reflected on being young once, and how fast 50 or so years have passed.
Desjardins led them in.
At the last minute, he abandoned his wheelchair, and with North Providence Mayor Charles Lombardi, his guardian, tagging along, Desjardins strode in and saluted the police and fire honor guards. Then all of the veterans filed in to the sound of bagpipes and drums, and cheers, and their faces shone with emotion.
“This is amazing!” one kept saying.
9:07 a.m.
The flight has landed. Inside the Washington National Airport, passengers who were heading for other flights instead have gathered at the Southwest Airlines gate. When North Attleborough firefighter Richard McDonough began to play the bagpipes to start the procession of veterans into the airport, the crowd began to cheer.
A father with two young children shouted “Thank you for your service!” over and over, as the veterans walked and rolled past his family. People rushed in for fist bumps and high fives and selfies with the astonished veterans, some of whom were moved to tears.
Desjardins whipped off his cap to show off his full head of hair, to mad applause. The normally loquacious Mayor Lombardi walked meekly at his side, here only to guide a hero through an adoring crowd.
Once on the tour bus, the group passed the Potomac River and the Pentagon, where the driver pointed out the side that had been hit by a plane during the Sept. 11 attacks. They disembarked at the US Airforce Memorial, where three stainless steel spires like the flight paths of jets, called “Soaring to Glory,” reach toward the sky.
Raymond Garlick, who served in the Air Force as a combat engineer at Tan Son Nhut Air Base in the mid-1960s, found it difficult to express what it meant to see the memorial. “I really couldn’t explain it,” the South Kingstown man said. “It’s so emotional.”
His wife, Kathleen, said she could feel it. “It’s emotional watching him seeing this for the first time, and it comes to life.”
11 a.m.
Raymond Raiche was helped into a wheelchair and his son, David, pushed him ahead to the Marine Corps War Memorial, to the statue that replicates the iconic photo of the Marines raising an American Flag at Iwo Jima.
The 32-foot-high figures, raising the 60-foot bronze flagpole with an American flag that snapped in the breeze, dwarfed the 97-year-old Navy veteran. Raiche said he remembered being at Iwo Jima and being shot by a Japanese soldier in the face. The bullet broke his glasses. Raiche laughs about it now. He survived and came back to Rhode Island, where he married and raised a family in Warwick.
“My dad never really talked much about what happened,” said David Raiche. His parents were married for 73 years and after his mother, Annette, died last year, David volunteered to bring his father on the Honor Flight.
It is their first time sharing a trip like this. “I’m going to be 98,” the veteran said. “This will be my last time.”
Paul Vadenais of North Smithfield had wanted to bring his father, Normand, on an Honor Flight, and also sponsor the whole trip. But then the pandemic happened and trips were canceled, and his father, an Army veteran in the Korean War, died.
Vadenais decided to sponsor this trip anyway and became a guardian for another Korean veteran, Ralph Litz. Litz said he’d been hesitant at first, concerned about his health, but Vadenais won him over. “He’s the best guardian I could have,” Litz said.
1:30 p.m.
The Honor Flight Rhode Island brought a ceremonial wreath to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Desjardins and 96-year-old World War II Navy veteran Anthony Barsamian, of Worcester, Mass., were going to lay the wreath. Mayor Lombardi and Vadenais, who is here in honor of his father, were going to push the men in their wheelchairs.
But instead, when Private First Class Randy Seguera stepped forward to escort them, Desjardins and Barsamian stood up and walked, with Vadenais and Lombardi following behind.
The crowd of tourists and the rest of the Honor Flight group watched in silence as the men moved forward and presented the wreath. And as one soldier played Taps, the veterans watching the ceremony held their salutes or their hands over their hearts, their eyes welling with tears.
When the men returned to their wheelchairs, a Vietnam veteran leaned in to shake their hands. “You made me so proud today,” he said.
2:30 p.m.
At the grand World War II memorial, tourists around the splashing fountains and granite columns stop to applaud the Honor Flight veterans as they gathered near the pool for a group photo. For some of them, it was the first time they had seen the memorials built to honor them.
After a few moments, the Rhode Island Professional Firefighters Pipes and Drums began to play, and they led the procession of veterans away from the memorial. People cheered as they passed by, some marching, some being pushed in wheelchairs, some pushing their own wheelchairs in defiance.
The procession of more than a hundred veterans and guardians followed the firefighters for the half-mile walk along the Reflecting Pool, where tourists stop and wave and salute the men. As they arrived at the base of the Lincoln Memorial, the pipes and drums played “Amazing Grace,” in memory of those who have passed.
Some in the crowd of onlookers became emotional and reached in to hug the veterans, thanking them for their service.
From here, some veterans turned to the left, to visit the memorial for the Korean War, while others headed to the Vietnam Memorial. Many of the Vietnam veterans headed for the Wall, to search for familiar names.
Vietnam veteran Peter Celani of Coventry found two names -- Edward Lakwa and Myron Nabozniak -- and rubbed them onto paper with a blue crayon. It’s been 53 years, he said, but this is the first time he’s been able to do this, to physically capture their names.
“They’ve always been etched in my mind,” Celani said.
When he was 19, he was drafted into the Army and became a radio operator. He said he remembers playing cards with Nabozniak. He remembers the day his friends died. They stepped on a large land mine. Celani called in the “dust ups,” the medevacs, and he swallowed his anger.
There was no welcome home for those who served in Vietnam. But this day was different, Celani, now a retired Providence firefighter, said. The Honor Flight “has been beautiful,” he said. It allowed him to feel ready to talk about his friends and trace their names.
Collins sat on a park bench near the Wall, with a smile on his face. He couldn’t wait to return to Providence and tell the other veterans what they’d missed.
Collins said he’d hoped to share this experience with his son, Michael Sanchez Collins, who’d retired from the Marines and had served in Iraq. His son had a different experience than his, and different from the other veterans Collins was meeting. His own generation was able to talk about their service and what they remembered in a way that was hard to explain. They all have stories. They were boots-on-the-ground in it, he said.
He served from 1967 to 1968 and was in the Tet Offensive. Over the years, Collins said, they learned about the impact of post-traumatic stress disorder on veterans. They learned to talk about their experiences. “It took me 35 years,” Collins said.
And this day was something special.
“It’s the camaraderie,” Collins said. “I’ve been through war, but not like this.”
The #HonorFlightRI veterans get mail from home — cards from loved ones and well-wishers.
Each has a photo of their younger selves. Roger Johnson, Navy, Vietnam War; Barry O’Connor, Marines, Vietnam; Roger Desjardins, Army WWII. pic.twitter.com/HCb24WAc35
— Amanda Milkovits (@AmandaMilkovits) June 19, 2023
6:40 p.m.
The camaraderie is what Roger Johnson, a Vietnam War veteran from Burrillville, thought about.
He’d joined the Navy at 19 and was shipped off to war. Yet on this trip, he couldn’t bring himself to go visit the Wall.
Instead, he focused on the entire Honor Flight experience with other veterans. “It’s the camaraderie of the people all around us,” he said.
At a ceremonial dinner, each veteran on the Honor Flight received “mail” from home -- letters and cards from loved ones and well-wishers thanking them for their service. School children drew cards with crayon. A Little League team in Burrillville signed a baseball for Johnson.
In each package, there was a photo of the veteran from when they first entered the service. Their impossibly young and serious faces stared back from black-and-white photos.
The photos were another reminder of the passage of time. Johnson thought about this today, as he looked at the group around him and himself in the photo from 53 years ago.
They’d all been young men, once. And here they were, 50 years later.
“It just goes by so fast,” Johnson said.
Desjardins led #HonorFlightRI at the start of the day.
— Amanda Milkovits (@AmandaMilkovits) June 19, 2023
The 98-year-old WWII veteran closes the evening by dancing with volunteer Julie Latessa. “It’s an honor & a gift to do this for them,” she says. pic.twitter.com/CLF97Qjuh1
9:20 p.m.
They are heading home.
Douglas Chase and Hurtis Mitchener Jr. walked together toward the airport gate at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.
They’d grown up together in the South Side of Providence, joined the Marine Corp on the same October day in 1969, graduated Parris Island the same day in December 1969, and eventually both ended up in Okinawa. When they both came home in 1971, the two Black men found the same cold welcome.
Although they’d served their country, they encountered racism at home.
Here they were, 54 years later, partnered together at the Honor Flight, being greeted and welcomed by the public for their service, all on same day that Governor Daniel McKee was signed legislation to make Juneteenth a holiday in Rhode Island.
“It was the recognition, offering opportunities to Vietnam veterans, and Juneteenth being recognized,” Mitchener said.
This day was more than they could have imagined, said Chase, who is also Narragansett Indian. “We finally got the recognition,” he said.
Several veterans told retired Providence Fire Chief George Farrell that this had been the best day of their lives.
Farrell, the founder of the Rhode Island Fire Chiefs Honor Flight Hub, says he often tells veterans that they will remember it forever. Whenever they close their eyes, he says, they can reminisce about the Honor Flight.
Amanda Milkovits can be reached at amanda.milkovits@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmandaMilkovits.
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