THE OCEANSIDER: Oceanside Veteran Vern Dick Recognized with an “Honor Flight” to Nation’s Capitol

Thanking them for their service…

By Jerry Keene, Editor, The Oceansider
At the Oceanside Community Club potluck this week, the boisterous mood quieted as President Kent Brown introduced longtime Oceansider Vern Dick to offer a few comments commemorating Veterans Day. Something poignant was clearly afoot as Vern struggled to speak, his usual, cantankerous wit replaced by tearful hesitance. With assistance from his daughter Sharon Brown and fellow veteran Ed Gorzinsky, he then treated the crowd to a moving account of an “honor flight” to Washington, D.C., that he and a group of fellow veterans were accorded in September to commemorate and express gratitude for their military service decades ago. (Gorzinsky made a similar trip one or two years earlier.) Vern – now 92 – served 8 years in the military, including 9 months on the front lines in the Korean conflict, where he was wounded and received a Purple Heart. Sergeant 1st Class Dick served with the 45th Division of the U.S. Army’s 279th Infantry.

The four-day trip was sponsored by Portland Honor Flight – the local chapter of a nonprofit organization engaged in providing such trips to the nation’s senior veterans. Vern was one of 25 veterans on his “honor flight” (24 men and one woman) ranging from 73 to 97 in age. The eldest served in World War II, four in Korea, and the remainder in Vietnam. All were required to use wheelchairs during the trip and were accompanied by volunteers or family members (not spouses) who served as “guardians.” Vern’s daughter Sharon Brown was his guardian – a job that, in her words, involved “pushing his wheelchair all over Washington D.C.”

The Oceansider interviewed Vern to hear more details about this special journey. He described how honor guards greeted them at the airports, assisting with boarding and deplaning at both ends of the trip. (Honor guards from the Beaverton and Hillsboro Police Departments waited for his delayed flight until 1 a.m. at the Portland Airport to greet him on his return.) During the trip, he and his fellow veterans visited national museums dedicated to each of the armed services and were served lunch at the U.S. Capitol by staff members for Senator Wyden and Representative Bonamici. It also included a tour of the national memorials for WW I, WW II, the Korean conflict and Vietnam as well as a flag ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington Cemetary. For obvious reasons, Vern was especially moved by the Korean War memorial, which he felt captured the essence of his own experience. When asked to sum up his impressions from the trip. Vern settled on “inspirational.” It was a trip he never expected to make, and he was gratified at such a “visible representation of the gratitude” that the country feels for its veterans.