TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) – Honor Flight Tallahassee took 72 veterans to Washington D.C. this year, and the only woman sporting the gold shirt was Juanita Raymond.
“I did not realize I was going to be the only female veteran here,” Raymond said.
Raymond joined the Army in 1974, not out of a lifelong dream, but out of love. When her husband Leland was drafted and heading overseas, she had a simple answer.
“I’m like, I’m going too,” Raymond said.
She enlisted just in time to serve in one of the last battalions of the Women’s Army Corps before it was folded into the regular Army. The two were married at 18 and 20, and served side by side in South Korea during the Vietnam War. Juanita served in the Army for six years.
“We got married there, she joined the Army there, then I got my orders to go to Korea — and she got to go to Korea at the same time,” Leland Raymond said.
Fifty-three years of marriage later, they made the trip to Washington D.C. together, this time with their son Daniel by their side.
“It’s an honor of a lifetime to be able to contribute like this,” Daniel Raymond said. “I love my parents very much and it’s really a real treat to be able to spend the day with them.”
For Juanita Raymond, getting a chance to stop and see several memorials with her husband and son meant everything.
“My heart just… it overflows,” she said.
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