Indy Honor Flight returns for the first time since 2019

INDIANAPOLIS — 86 veterans ranging from 70 to 100-years-old spent their Saturday in Washington, DC for the 33rd Indy Honor Flight.

Provided Photo/Indy Honor Flight

The last Honor Flight was on October 26, 2019. The organization takes Indiana military veterans to DC to visit war memorials.

Byron Temple, a Vietnam Air Force veteran who currently lives in Beech Grove, is on the trip.

"There's nothing I enjoy more than meeting with other veterans and you don't see that many of them anymore. More and more of them are dying every day it seems like, so I always love the opportunity to get together with a veteran and exchange stories and so forth," Temple said.

He tells WRTV he loved to travel and through the Air Force he went to places like the Arctic Circle for NATO training. Until he graduated from high school and joined the Air Force in 1962, he had never traveled outside his home state of Michigan.

Provided Photo/Byron Temple

This flight included:

• 4 WWII Veterans
• 1 WWII/Korea Veteran
• 16 Korea Veterans
• 4 Korea/Vietnam Veterans
• 61 Vietnam Veterans

Provided Photo/Indy Honor Flight

Indy Honor Flight says more than 1,000 veterans are on a waitlist for the trip. Two additional Honor Flights are planned for May and June.