Bay Minette Breakfast Honors Legacy of Baldwin County’s Honor Flight Missions

A Tuesday morning breakfast in Bay Minette turned into a tribute to one of Baldwin County’s proudest civic achievements, as an Eastern Shore dentist thanked the community for helping send hundreds of World War II veterans on once-in-a-lifetime trips to Washington, D.C.

Dr. Barry Booth, a Vietnam veteran who spent years organizing the regional Honor Flight program, was the featured speaker at the Baldwin County Commission’s 10th annual “Day of Thanks” breakfast at the John F. Rhodes Civic Center. The free, public event drew about 50 attendees who gathered to hear Booth reflect on the program’s impact before it concluded in 2013.

Between 2008 and 2013, the Honor Flight effort organized nine chartered flights carrying World War II veterans from Mobile to Washington, D.C., where they toured military memorials, including the World War II Memorial, at no cost to the veterans themselves. Each trip paired veterans with volunteer “guardians” who helped manage medical needs and ensured a smooth, memorable day of travel and sightseeing.

Booth said Baldwin County residents were especially generous supporters of the program throughout its run. In all, the flights carried 957 World War II veterans to the nation’s capital, and Booth said organizers made a point of reaching every veteran in the region who wanted to make the trip. “That’s every single World War II veteran within our sphere of influence who wanted to go,” he said. “No one was left behind.”

The program’s final homecoming, held at Mobile Regional Airport in May 2013, drew roughly 1,000 people to welcome the returning veterans, a scene that repeated, on a smaller scale, after each of the nine flights.

Among those who benefited from the program was 98-year-old Army veteran Jim Nickerson, who flew on the second Honor Flight and spoke briefly during the breakfast about his wartime service, which included fighting at the Battle of Kasserine Pass in North Africa and taking part in the D-Day invasion at Utah Beach. Nickerson thanked Booth for the opportunity, joking that his wife had encouraged him to go partly just to get him out of the house for the day.

About Honor Flight

The Honor Flight program was founded in 2005 by Earl Morse, a physician assistant and retired Air Force captain who worked at a Department of Veterans Affairs clinic in Springfield, Ohio, and Jeff Miller, the son of a World War II veteran. Morse came up with the idea after learning that many of his World War II veteran patients had no way to visit the National World War II Memorial, completed in Washington in 2004.