The Cape Girardeau Regional Airport will host a Veterans Honor Flight Send-Off event on Thursday, March 27, 2025. The event will feature activities designed to celebrate these veterans and their sacrifices.
Woods: This is KRCU's Going Public. I'm Dan Woods and I'm here with JoJo Stuart, he's the airport manager at the Cape Girardeau Regional Airport. We're here to talk about the Veterans Honor Flight Send-off Event that's coming up later in March. JoJo, welcome to the program.
Stuart: Thanks, thanks for having me. Great to be here.
Woods: Good to have you here and so tell us about this very special veterans event coming up.
Stuart: Yeah, so on March 27, we're gonna have an honor flight, a veterans honor flight, for mostly World War II veterans. There's not a lot of them left, and according to the Wake Foundation who is throwing this together, there was only like 60,000, I think, in the country left and there's like 700 a day that, you know, that pass on.
So it's, you know, there's not a lot of these guys left and a lot of them enjoy going out to Washington, DC and seeing monuments and the memorials and kind of getting honored for the service that they they did, you know, back in the day and, you know, we uh at the airport and when Wake Foundation came to us and asked hey, would you like to have an honor flight? It's been a few years. I think it's been since like 2020 was the last one that you did.
And, um, said, yeah, definitely if we're gonna honor these guys for their service and, you know, they're the ones that allow us to have our freedoms that we do in America here, so, uh let's honor them and get them out and, um we've had some great sponsors that came forward, VFW 3838 and Contour Airlines. Contour Airlines is actually donating two aircraft to transport them out.
Woods: So really cool. And I know there's a rich history with veterans at the Cape airport going back many, many years. So this is just feeding right into that legacy.
Stuart: Yeah, you know, the airport originally got built it was kind of to be a training thing for military and, you know kind of been in the service ever since it, you know, started out in aviation and so they've always had veterans and the older guys flying and they have their own kit planes and things like that out of the airport. So uh yeah, so this was great. And hopefully we're gonna have a good turnout.
Woods: Yeah, and so you told me before we started, you're hoping for good weather. That's the one question.
Stuart: Yeah, that's always the question. That's always the, you know, you can try to plan and have a great strategy, and then the weather decides if you throw a curve ball, so I mean, luckily with our new, we got, you know, a nice new big terminal, that if you haven't seen anybody that comes down, they can, you know, that they'll get to see that. So we definitely have enough space to bring it inside if we have to, but uh, we're hoping to have most of it, you know, a lot of it out front and be able to get out back on the ramp and kind of salute them as they as they taxi out.
Woods: So what kind of activities are gonna be taking place as part of this event?
Stuart: So we're gonna have a a procession, a police and fire escort from the Veterans Home here in Cape. That's where all the other veterans are I think, where they're all gonna meet, you know on a bus. We're going to have a procession for them to come down to the airport and then the whole airport entrance, airport road is gonna, you know, lined with flags that we got from Dave Contrell with VFW 3838.
And we're gonna have bands from some of the schools. There's gonna be a bunch of school kids there — choir. They're gonna have some of the classrooms, the kids have made letters for them to sign and you're going to be able to take photos with the veterans, we're gonna have a history of each veteran, you know, what what they've done, what service they were in and that's gonna be displayed, running, you know, almost like a ticker tape.
And you can get your picture with them, we're gonna have backdrops for doing that and then we're gonna have a our fire department honor guard, there's gonna be a color guard from I think the Dexter VFW, I believe, but don't quote me on that one. But they're going to be there as well. Uh they're gonna, you know couple other festivities as far as giving them a state flag and things like that.
Woods: So, plenty of things to do.
Stuart: It's gonna kick off around 9:30, I think officially it's 9:45, but get there at 9:30. And there we're hoping to have them on the plane by 11:30., so there'll be a good hour and a half, hour and 45 minutes of uh hanging out and getting to meet them and honoring their service that they've done.
Woods: And this is on Thursday, March 27th.
Stuart: Thursday, March 27th. Yep. They'll fly out at 11:30 a.m., then they come back on Saturday the [March] 29th. So that they'll land at Baltimore, Washington and and they have a full gambit on their on their plates out there. They're gonna have a bunch of dinners and luncheons and go to see all the memorials.
Woods: And it's a free event for anyone to come out and participate in, right?
Stuart: Yep, it's free, so come on in and there'll be food there and there'll be uh we're gonna have a DJ, so there'll be some music going on.
Woods: Sounds like a fun event.
Stuart: Yeah. Should be hope so, like I said, the weather.
Woods: Yeah, we'll keep our fingers crossed. JoJo Stewart always a pleasure to talk with you. Thanks for being on the program today.
Stuart: Thank you, thanks for having me.
