MEANA is excited to partner with Honor Flight Maine, an organization that was started in 2014 with the mission of taking Maine’s veterans to Washington DC to see the memorials built in their honor and memory. The only requirement to be eligible for an Honor Flight is to have served in the US Military.
Please see brochure for more detailed information.
HFM BROCHUREA Brief History:
The Honor Flight organization was started in 2005 by Earl Morse and Jeff Miller. Earl is a physician assistant and also retired from the US Air Force. When talking with his WWII patients, he would tell them about the WWII memorial that had been built and completed in 2004. Every time the patient would tell him that although they were happy for the memorial to be built, they themselves would never be able to go see it. Time and time again he heard the same story, and repeated when he saw the same patients a few months later. He finally asked 2 WWII veterans if they would go with him if he took them in his Cessna. It was instant tears from each of the veterans, and in the spring of 2005, Earl and his dad flew the first 2 veterans on their Honor Flight. Earl was a member of the local flying club in Springfield, Ohio and presented his mission to the group. He got several other pilots to agree to also fly veterans and by the end of 2005, Earl and his friends had taken 137 veterans. Meanwhile in North Carolina, Jeff Miller (who was not a veteran but grew up in a family with a longstanding military history) heard about what Earl was doing, but said that larger planes were needed. He started flying veterans on commercial jets, and took 300 veterans to DC. The 2 men met sometime around 2007, and in an IHOP on the back of a paper napkin, they blended their 2 organizations into what we know today as the “Honor Flight Network”.
Earl spent a number of years here in Maine working in the VA clinics and was instrumental in helping Honor Flight Maine get started.
Since Earl’s first flight in 2005, between Maine and the other 123 hubs have now flown over 260,000 veterans on an Honor Flight. Since starting in 2014, Honor Flight Maine has transported 1033 veterans. Not one veteran has ever paid a penny for their seat and not one veteran will ever pay a penny. Each hub relies on donations to accomplish the mission.
DONATE HERENote: When directed to the donation page, please click the “in memory of/tribute to” text box and add MEANA CRNA Week, so we are able to track donations made by our members.
How can the MEANA help Honor Flight Maine:
- The monies being raised are a huge help for HFM to continue the mission. It costs approximately $1000 to take 1 veteran on a trip.
- Write letters to be used for Mail Call. Sometimes a veteran won’t have many letters in their envelope so HFM volunteer staff will look for letters that have been written generically as “Dear Veteran”. It can be a letter, a postcard, a greeting card, a drawing, etc. If you are not familiar, “Mail Call” is the term used when our military members are deployed. When the big bag of mail arrives from home, they declare “Mail Call” and everyone comes to see if maybe there is a letter for them from home. HFM recreates this experience by declaring “Mail Call” on the flight home, a very touching experience for the veterans.
- Volunteer with HFM at the Portland airport when we have a trip leaving or returning home.
- Volunteer to be a guardian. Each veteran has a guardian travel with them. The guardian assists with luggage, pushing the wheelchair if need be, helping the veteran getting dressed, etc. Most of the time a family member will go with the veteran. Once in a while, a veteran won’t have a family member available to go with them, so HFM pools volunteers willing to travel with anyone needing help.
- Volunteer to be part of the medical team. Each trip has either 2 or 4 medical volunteers that go on the trip depending on how many people are traveling. The medical staff is currently made up of doctors, nurses, EMTs, paramedics, medical assistants, etc.
Note: When directed to the donation page, please click the “in memory of/tribute to” text box and add MEANA CRNA Week, so we are able to track donations made by our members.
Or use the QR code:
Honor Flight Maine is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and donations are tax-deductible to the extent of the law.