LaRue and Joanna visit Vegas

In April, LaRue McNamara and Joanna Spiller attended the Academy of Country Music Festival in Las Vegas representing Honor Flight Southland. All the board members of Honor Flight were invited by the ACM to set up a booth at the festival to help people become aware of their organization.

Over the three days, many people from all over the country visited the booth, learned about Honor Flight, wrote thank-you letters to vets and made cash contributions. Saturday night, the Academy of Country Music awarded Honor Flight Southland $30,000 for its project.

The Honor Flight Network was founded in May 2005. There are 132 hubs across the United States. So far, more than 139,000 WWII vets have been taken to Washington, D.C. to visit the WWII Memorial and other sites.

Honor Flight Southland hub was founded in April 2014 and already has taken three groups of WWII vets to Washington to visit the WWII Memorial, Korean Memorial, Viet Nam Wall, Arlington National Cemetery Changing of the Guard, Air Force Memorial, Iwo Jima and Lincoln Memorials.

LaRue and Joanna will be taking another group in October. All accommodations, meals, snacks, airline tickets and hotels are provided at no cost to the veterans. To learn more about this organization, visit the booth at Fiesta Day on May 28.