Honored for their service: 2 local veterans taking Honor Flight to DC

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  • Hopkins County veterans and former U.S. Marines proudly saluted the American flag in front of the courthouse Thursday during a send-off ceremony for Honor Flight 41. Keith Klein and Ronnie Whitlock, brothers-in-law who both served in the military during the Vietnam War, were chosen to go on the flight to Washington D.C. Staff photo by Tammy Vinson
    Hopkins County veterans and former U.S. Marines proudly saluted the American flag in front of the courthouse Thursday during a send-off ceremony for Honor Flight 41. Keith Klein and Ronnie Whitlock, brothers-in-law who both served in the military during the Vietnam War, were chosen to go on the flight to Washington D.C. Staff photo by Tammy Vinson
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Hopkins County paid tribute to its military veterans Thursday in an Honor Flight send-off ceremony at the courthouse. Two local veterans joined 40 fellow veterans from World War II to Vietnam aboard Honor Flight 41, which departed from Dallas Love Field Friday morning bound for Washington D.C. During their 38-hour trip, Keith Klein and Ronnie Whitlock toured national war memorials, attended a banquet in their honor and visited Arlington National Cemetery and Audie Murphy’s grave.

They will return to Love Field Saturday night to a hero’s welcome.

Klein was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1964, but then enlisted, explaining “you got a better deal if you enlisted.”

After basic and aircraft training, he worked as a surveyor and spent 10 weeks in Libya, 13 months in Ethiopia (including a four-month detachment to Sudan) and one year in Liberia before being discharged in 1967.

“We were prepping for the next war,” Klein recalled.

“[Ronnie and I] are so excited to get to see the memorials on this trip. We keep asking others who have gone on Honor Flights, but they won’t tell us anything. They say we gotta wait and see,” Klein said.

Whitlock, who is Klein’s brother-in-law, enlisted in the U.S. Navy straight out of high school. He spent two years in Japan, and then served 16 months on the USS Oriskorany, an Essex-class aircraft carrier. He worked on the flight deck and vividly recalled stories about jets landing on the deck in afterburner and launches and landings.

“With those catapults, the pilots taking off had about 30 seconds, and they were either in the water or in the air. But they were not on the ship,” Whitlock said.

The Oriskorany was decommissioned in 1976, sold for scrap in 1995, repossessed in 1997 and blown up in 2004 to create an artificial reef off the Florida coast in the Gulf of Mexico. “I was there when they blew her up,” Whitlock said.

One other thing he recalled about his time on the ship was the number of people on board.

“There were 6,500 people on that ship. There were more people on that ship than there were in all of Delta County! [where Whitlock grew up],” he said.

Hopkins County veterans who served during wartime and are interested in taking an Honor Flight can apply online at www.honorflightdfw.org.First priority is given to World War II veterans and veterans with terminal illness, then to Korean War and Vietnam veterans. According to their website, Honor Flight DFW has more than a hundred veterans on their waiting list with more applications arriving all the time.