A Day for Remembering

I was just starting out,at about 10 a.m. on Tuesday morning, walking away from the gate at BWI Airport, trying to keep my two veterans going in the right direction, after having sat for several hours on the airplane, where all had gotten stiff-legged and desperately in need of a potty break. We were heading down toward the charter buses, and I fell in behind someone (not one of our group, because he did not have our identifying 'honor flight' T-shirt on), who nearly made me turn around and ask to be sent home.
He looked so much like my dad from the back, with bowed-out legs, walking like his knees hurt, but determined to plug away and make it to his destination, in a plaid, grand-pa like shirt, neatly tucked in, with thinning hair, and kinda stooped over posture, I thought to myself: "that's somebody's Papa". I am glad I had already put my dark glasses on, so no one could question why I was so teary, since we had just gotten off the flight, and were not even close to getting to the 'remembering teary' part that would make veterans and people who love them get weepy. If there was any way I could have backed out in that instant, I would have told them to Send Me Home, as I did not think I was able to see it through.
But I could not jump on the next flight, and did spend the day with two sweet, agreeable, relatively healthy, completely independent, totally mobile veterans from Albany. We had a good day, and everyone returned safely home about 10:00 last night.
Each time I hve made that one-day trip with the Honor Flight Veterans, I have taken a little rock, with 'TR Fluker, Quitman, GA' written in sharpie, and put it on the section of the WWII memorial that is the column for the state of Georgia. Yesterday my little offering was a smooth, flat piece of oyster shell that was about the size and color of a quarter. I expect that the Park service regularly goes by and cleans them all off - and it is a continual process of gathering up mememtos, just like all the little rememberances people leave at the Vietnam Memorial. But it's important to me. And I will always remember.