{"id":257879,"date":"2026-04-20T13:07:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T13:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/257879\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T13:07:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T13:07:11","slug":"brazos-valley-veterans-get-special-sendoff-for-texas-first-ever-fleet-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/257879\/","title":{"rendered":"Brazos Valley veterans get special sendoff for Texas\u2019 first-ever Fleet Week"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KBTX) &#8211; Twenty Brazos Valley veterans will travel to Houston to participate in Texas\u2019 first <a href=\"https:\/\/fleetweekhouston.com\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/fleetweekhouston.com\/\">Fleet Week<\/a>, an annual military event where the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard bring their ships into port and open them to the public.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">More than 1,000 sailors and Marines are in Houston for the state\u2019s first Fleet Week. The USS Kearsarge, one of the Navy\u2019s most powerful assault ships, is docked at Bayport for public tours.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\"><a href=\"https:\/\/alegion159.org\/index.html\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/alegion159.org\/index.html\">American Legion Post 159<\/a> members will gather at <a href=\"https:\/\/visit.cstx.gov\/directory\/veterans-park-and-athletic-complex-college-station-parks\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/visit.cstx.gov\/directory\/veterans-park-and-athletic-complex-college-station-parks\/\">Veterans Park<\/a> in College Station at 9:30 a.m. for an honor flight-style sendoff before heading to Bayport to tour the ship, which carries helicopters, aircraft and hundreds of active-duty sailors.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Cecil Ware, an 82-year-old Navy veteran with American Legion Post 159 in Bryan and served four tours in the Vietnam War, is one of the veterans making the trip. Ware said he served aboard an earlier version of the Kearsarge in the 1960s.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cIt gives me a chance to go back and be younger again, if you know what I mean,\u201d Ware said. \u201cSo if I get a chance to go out and see some of the younger people and the sailors that are out there now, that will be a benefit to me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure-img img-fluid mx-auto d-block\" alt=\"The inaugural Fleet Week is being held in Houston from April 15\u201322, 2026.\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/FVGSQ6V5UFFTBBC7CO24IGY7BY.png\" width=\"980\" height=\"551\" \/>The inaugural Fleet Week is being held in Houston from April 15\u201322, 2026.(kbtx)<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Ware said he hopes visitors will be impressed by the ship\u2019s size and the dedication of the people serving aboard it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cThis will give me a chance to be able to say, \u2018yeah, I got a chance to do that before,\u2019\u201d Ware said. \u201cI hope they take a look at it and say, \u2018wow, that\u2019s big,\u2019 and then the second thing obviously would be to see some of the equipment and the people on there and how dedicated they are to the military in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Fleet Week runs through the weekend in Houston. Community members are invited to join the sendoff for local veterans at Veterans Park and Athletic Complex in College Station at 9:30 a.m., on Monday, April 20, 2026.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 KBTX. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KBTX) &#8211; Twenty Brazos Valley veterans will travel to Houston to participate in Texas\u2019 first&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[254,2055,2060,2058,2057,2059,2061,27,29,28,2056],"class_list":{"0":"post-257879","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breaking-news-video","10":"tag-live-speeches","11":"tag-live-updates","12":"tag-live-video","13":"tag-press-conference","14":"tag-real-time-coverage","15":"tag-texas","16":"tag-texas-headlines","17":"tag-texas-news","18":"tag-video-updates"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}