The room was packed Thursday morning with military veterans, family members and community supporters, all chowing down on pancakes, sausage, coffee and juice.
It was another Honor Flight Kern County breakfast, a monthly gathering of comradeship and fundraising organized on the first Thursday of each month at the Elks lodge in downtown Bakersfield.
Since its first flight in 2012, the all-volunteer nonprofit has flown roughly 3,000 local veterans to the war memorials and monuments at the nation’s capital.
Vietnam veteran and Taft College alumnus Roger Brown, 80, is one of dozens of vets scheduled to be on the next flight, which is set to depart from Meadows Field Airport in Bakersfield on Sept. 25, and return on the 27th.
“I’ve been to all those places, but I’ve never been there with other vets,” Brown said as he paused his breakfast.
Many Honor Flight veterans will tell you, being there with other veterans is an experience in itself. It changes lives.
“The ideal thing would be to meet up with some of the guys I served with,” Brown said. “That would be amazing, but I don’t see that happening.”
What’s much more likely is Brown will bond with other Vietnam vets as they take a tour of the National World War II Memorial, the Korean War Veterans Memorial and of course, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall, a moving, yet strangely peaceful place, where visitors can view the names of more than 58,000 American soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen etched into black granite.
Brown’s flight is sponsored by the Taft College Foundation in partnership with Safe 1 Credit Union, which donated $1,500 toward Brown’s trip to the East Coast.
“The Taft College Foundation has been having a cookout for 16 years,” said Sheri Horn-Bunk, executive director of the Taft College Foundation.
Each year, hundreds of residents of western Kern County show up at the Cougar Cookout.
This year, Safe 1 Credit Union gave them an extra $1,500 to send a veteran to honor flight.
“We’ve been doing this about 11 years,” Horn-Bunk said. And over the years, they’ve sent more than 20 veterans on this life-changing flight.
Longtime Honor Flight volunteer Armando Soliz was also at the Thursday morning event. The U.S. Air Force veteran lost his brother to the war in Vietnam.
U.S. Marine Cpl. Thomas Soliz was killed in action on Sept. 6, 1967.
Tommy, as Soliz remembers him, was only 19.
Another solid volunteer, Karen Galyan, lost her beloved son, U.S. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. David “Cole” Lang.
But she was there Thursday, still working even after the event had wound down.
“You know, I’ve never volunteered for an organization that I love so much,” Galyan said of Honor Flight. “It just fills the soul. It really does.
“I love talking to the volunteers that come. They love coming here because they know they are going to get a smile, and they know that they’re going to walk away with a beautiful feeling in their heart.”
The breakfast events take place on the first Thursday of every month from 8 to 10 a.m. at Elks Lodge No. 266, 1616 30th St., just west of the Garces Circle.
The cost is free for all Honor Flight and local veterans, but guests are limited to one per veteran and the cost for visitors is $10.