Visit from Grandpa

One of the nice things about living in the Washington, DC area is that occasionally we get family coming to visit, and we get to go play tour guide! The last couple days, my Grandpa Pete was here as part of the Honor Flight program. This organization provides an all-expenses paid site-seeing trip to DC for primarily World War II veterans. My grandpa is a veteran - he was an airplane mechanic stationed at various locations in the US, so he never was personally involved in any fighting - and he took advantage of the opportunity to come out to see the sites and also to see us. We met him at the airport, and we were all excited to see each other!


I rode down in the bus with him and chatted as we went to Arlington National Cemetery. Since the tour group would be heading to their hotel that night, and we would need our own way back home, Tanja drove the car down with Snoopy (more on that later). Because of the logistics issues involved in herding 100+ veterans and their "guardians" (volunteer helpers) on and off tour buses, we were almost unable to make the 5:00 PM last public ceremonial Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. We were one of the lucky ones first off the bus, and so I ran and pushed Grandpa's wheelchair into position to get a good view of the ceremony just in time. It was actually the second time I have ran pushing someone in a wheelchair to view that ceremony. The first time was when my sister Kellie injured her knee one year when she was out visiting me. I guess that experience prepared me for pushing Grandpa!


Grandpa really liked the Cemetery. It was quite peaceful.


After we were done at the Cemetery, the group was going to head over to the Iwo Jima Marine Memorial. Tanja had parked the car inside the Cemetery grounds in the visitor parking area so she could come meet us at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Then she walked over to the Iwo Jima Memorial, which sits just outside of the Cemetery. As I mentioned, it is quite a production getting all these veterans on and off the bus. Consequently, it took over an hour and a half from the time Tanja left Grandpa and me to walk over to Iwo Jima before the buses arrived a mile down the road at Iwo Jima (although some of that time was spent watching a rare and special Rose Ceremony honoring one of the guards who was ending his enlistment). This meant that the gates to the Cemetery were closed by the time we finished at Iwo Jima - locking our car inside the gates!

Needless to say, we were quite worried, and getting cold in the night air. I went and started rattling doors looking for night guards or someone. Tanja fortunately spotted a night guard as he was closing up the visitor's center inside the gates. When she stated the problem, the guard asked, "Oh, so you've got the Camry?" Yes, yes we do...

We can laugh about it now, but at the time, I was trying to figure out finding a hotel for us that would accept Snoopy for the night, or possibly experiencing life as one of DC's homeless for a night. We're very grateful that things worked out.

Anyway, the next day (today) we woke bright and early for the drive downtown - without Snoopy so Tanja and I could both ride in the bus. We made it down to the World War II Memorial where we eventually met up with Grandpa and the veterans for a second day of touring. This day focused on the war memorials and the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall.

First, they got everyone together for a group photo by the Colorado pillar of the World War II Memorial (since this Honor Flight Group was from the Western Slope of Colorado). Grandpa is sitting in his wheelchair on the edge in the front row.



We then got to wander around the memorial a little and take some pictures while we were chatting. I noticed that I seemed to be pushing Grandpa on all the sections that were uphill, while Tanja's sections were downhill. When I asked her about it, she just grinned and asked, "So?" :-)

I didn't mind at all. It was nice to play tour guide.


After the World War II Memorial, we got everyone back on the bus to drive a few blocks more and then get out at the Lincoln Memorial. We took Grandpa up to see the massive statue of Abraham Lincoln.


We also got a pretty good view from the Lincoln Memorial off across the Mall to the Washington Monument.


After visiting the Lincoln Memorial we also went to see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Korean War Memorial (but I think I have included enough pictures for one post).

The visit was a definite success. I think my Grandpa really enjoyed himself and seeing us, and I know we were glad to spend some time with him showing him around.