Permian Basin Honor Flight: Vietnam Veteran finds healing and comfort
SAN ANGELO, Texas (Concho Valley Homepage) — For Don Pearson, being a part of this Permian Basin Honor Flight mission was life-changing, as it was for many others on board. Pearson served in the United States Navy from 1962 to 1966. He said his whole family was in the Navy, and that was all he knew about. It was on this trip he was able to learn more about the other branches of the military and gain a better appreciation for their work and sacrifices.
“It gave me some knowledge I did not have before,” Pearson said.
While in the Navy, Pearson told us he worked as the section leader of an air terminal.
“When planes going from the United States, for instance, to Vietnam, the seal teams and things like that would stop in our terminal,” Pearson said.
He also said that on some days, his orders were different than others.
“A lot of the time I had a permanent set of TDY orders and a lot of the times if a crew member got sick or something they would go in and say ‘Hey Pearson get on the plane,'” Pearson said.
Once on the plane, he said he never knew where they would end up. He certainly never thought that one day, by getting on that plane, he would end up in Vietnam. He said seeing the Vietnam Wall and other memorials reminded him of a lot of sleepless nights and the heartache of how he was treated returning home from war. It was a group of school-aged kids that approached our unsung heroes at the Vietnam Wall Memorial that changed Pearson’s life and the lives of some of the other veterans forever.
“We went to one memorial and as we went through it there were I’d say probably 200-300 school children all going ‘thank you for your service’ and waving…a lot of us did not get that when we came home…to see those school kids all standing there waving, wanting to touch you or wanting to shake your hand…it’s pretty tear-jerking,” Pearson said.
Those kids have no idea how much that interaction meant to these veterans. Pearson said he could never thank them or the Permian Basin Honor Flight system enough for healing a wound he never thought would be mended.
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