Honor Flight of West Central Florida<\/a>.<\/p>\nRob Cozen, a Navy veteran, and Bob Swick, a Marine veteran, are among 76 veterans traveling Tuesday with Honor Flight of West Central Florida. The two friends said they are glad to make the trip together.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo coincidence at all. Well planned,\u201d Cozen said.<\/p>\n
Cozen and Swick, who are 80 and 85, said they waited years for the opportunity because they wanted World War II and Korean War veterans to go first.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was very conscious about not wanting to go before they exhausted all of the World War II and Korea guys,\u201d Cozen said. \u201cAlso, we wanted to be sure that we went together.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cKorean War veterans have had their chance, and they\u2019ve passed; the World War II have passed, sadly, but that\u2019s part of life,\u201d Swick said. \u201cNow it\u2019s our turn.\u201d<\/p>\n
Luchtenberg said Honor Flight of West Central Florida now mostly recruits Vietnam-era veterans because so few World War II and Korean War veterans remain who can travel.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere just aren\u2019t many left that are able to leave their area and travel,\u201d Luchtenberg said. \u201cSo it\u2019s very difficult at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of the 76 veterans heading to Washington on Tuesday, only one is a World War II veteran, and one is a Korean War veteran. The rest are Vietnam veterans.<\/p>\n
Luchtenberg said the organization asks veterans who have taken the trip to help spread the word to others.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe ask them to spread the word at their clubs, their American Legions, to their friends, neighbors, to try and get more veterans to apply,\u201d Luchtenberg said.<\/p>\n
The trip is free for veterans and takes place in one day, with participants leaving in the morning and returning that night.<\/p>\n
Swick said the return home is one of the most memorable parts of the experience, with large crowds greeting veterans at St. Pete-Clearwater airport.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re talking about hundreds and hundreds of people that come to the St. Pete\/Clearwater airport to greet the people that have come by and are coming back, and the tears that flow are just beautiful,\u201d Swick said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 Honor Flight of West Central Florida is working to recruit more Vietnam-era veterans for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1011,1190,4628,115,596,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,3393,835],"class_list":["post-432504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-app-human-interest","tag-human-interest","tag-matt-lackritz","tag-news","tag-pinellas-county","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tampa","tag-veterans","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}