County vets join Honor Flight to D.C. this weekend

Daily News (West Bend, Wis.)
Published: Sept. 15, 2017

County vets join Honor Flight to D.C. this weekend

By NICHOLAS DETTMANN

ndettmann@conleynet.com 262-306-5043

Dennis Muench is the youngest of six boys. Each of his older brothers served in some branch of the military — Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines.

“It was the right thing to do,” said the 71-yearold town of West Bend resident. “To serve your country if you can.”

Muench served two years in the Army (1965-67) and served in Vietnam during the Vietnam War (1966-67).

Now, 50 years later, he jokes he left all the “keepsakes” in Vietnam. The few patches from his uniform he does have are with two of his three children.

“I would’ve probably lost it by now,” Muench said with a big pearly-white smile.

He was proud of his service and had no regrets. He was also OK with not talking about it with only to a select fewfor many years.

“You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,” Muench said.

On Saturday, Muench will join hundreds of military veterans, including an airplane full of Vietnam vets, on the Stars and Stripes Honor Flight and go to Washington, D.C., for a day of honor

and thank yous, two things that were hard to come by for years with Vietnam vets.

“It should not be looked down on,” Muench said of Vietnam veterans’ place in military history.

Two Delta Airlines A320 airplanes will leave Milwaukee’s General Mitchell International Airport on Saturday morning and fly to the nation’s capital. One plane will carry a mix of World War II, Korean War and Vietnam War veterans. The other plane will carry all Vietnam vets.

For the first time since the Stars and Stripes program’s inception in 2008, one plane will be filled with veterans of Vietnam.

“Since we opened our Honor Flight application process to Vietnam veterans on May 1, we have been thrilled with the enthusiastic response from not only the Vietnam veteran community, but the public in general,” said Karyn Roelke, vice president- public relations for the Stars and Stripes Honor Flight program. “Southeastern Wisconsin is truly ready to give our Vietnam veterans the ‘welcome home’ that they have deserved for so long.”

Veterans who will be taking their Honor Flight on Saturday include both a B-17 bomber pilot and crew chief from WWII, a 94-year-old Women’s Air Corps private, a WWII foot soldier who served in the Philippines, a Korean War Marine who received the Purple Heart but refused it, two Vietnam War combat medics and a Vietnam War helicopter pilot.

In all, more than 150 veterans from Wisconsin will go to D.C. Of that 150-plus, 16 are from Washington County — 11 served in or during Vietnam.
For Muench, it is his first visit to D.C. since 1966, long before the Vietnam Wall was built. And while he has seen the replica moving wall, he admitted it will likely be different to see it in D.C.

“It’ll be tough,” he said.

Nobody in his outfit died while in Vietnam. However, he knows people who are on the wall, including two people he went to high school with in Antigo.

“It was just ... thank God you made it,” Muench said of what it was like to see someone he knew on the wall.

When Muench heard the Stars and Stripes program was accepting Vietnam veterans for trips, he mentioned it to his youngest son, Aaron, and Aaron, who was proudly named after baseball legend Hank Aaron, acted on it quickly.

He wasn’t alone.

“We had no idea what to expect the response would be when we began taking applications from Vietnam veterans, but it has been overwhelming and fantastic,” Roelke said. “We know that some Vietnam War veterans may be reluctant to sign up, for fear of opening old wounds. However, a large group of veterans has already signed up and we will begin flying some of them this weekend.

“We hope that, as these veterans experience a full day of honor and thanks and come home refreshed and renewed, that their experience will encourage their Vietnam veteran brothers and sisters to sign up as well.”

Vietnam Navy Chaplain Ray Stubbe of Wauwatosa encourages all veterans to sign up.

In a letter he wrote to Stars and Stripes and then provided to the Daily News following his June 9 flight, “The Honor Flight program is indeed perhaps the best therapeutic action for combat veterans,” Stubbe wrote. “In general, this was an experience of overwhelming superlatives. The final result of the trip was an impression and an awareness of great joy, being richly filled and deeply blessed. The Honor Flight was like an injection of energy into my life.”