Long-time La Grange resident Chester Lacey was honored on April 10 for his service during the Vietnam War by Honor Flight Chicago, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that flies veterans — free of charge — to Washington, D.C. for a day.
“It was about four or five busloads with a police escort,” he said of the day trip. “We went to the Vietnam memorial … it felt real good to be there because when we went to the Air and Space Museum, I saw the planes I worked on.”
Born in Birmingham, Alabama, the 77-year-old Lacey has lived in La Grange since 1980.
His service during the Vietnam War included being stationed in Thailand servicing the F-105 ThunderChiefs that operated in the Vietnam theater. After leaving the Air Force in 1968 — as an Airman 1st Class — Lacey joined the U.S. Army Reserves, where he served for several decades.
Lacey’s family members were happy with the way the day tuned out.
“It was really nice,” Lacey’s wife, Park District Commissioner Minister Lynn Lacey, said.
“It was very exciting, we were very proud of my dad,” April Hill, Lacey’s daughter said. “It felt good; it was a blessing.”
Doug Meffley, Co-Director of Honor Flight Chicago, spoke recently about the organization’s mission and how it got started.
“We started in 2008, was our first season,” he said. “We flew World War II veterans only until 2016, and that’s when we opened it up to Korean War veterans, and then we opened it to Vietnam veterans in 2019. We fly all three generations together now.”
Meffley said that Wednesday’s flight brought the total vets served to a little over 10,700, the vast majority being World War II vets, about 6300. Twenty-three hundred Korean vets have made the flight and just over 2100 Vietnam vets have flown. And though the World War II vets are rapidly leaving the scene, Wednesday’s flight did include three from the nation’s “Greatest Generation.” One of the vets served in George Patton’s Army in Europe.
“We’ve still got a dozen on our list right now, but not all of them will fly, due to varying degrees of health limitations,” he said.
The goal of Honor Flight Chicago was to have seven flights per year, scheduling them once a month from April to October, Maffey said. Once there, the vets visit various monuments to service members, particularly for the conflict in which they served.
“It’s different on every flight, but on this one, we first stopped at the Marine Corps Memorial, and from there we went to the World War II Memorial, where we have a nice ceremony for all the vets,” he said. “Then we went down to the Mall to the Lincoln Memorial, where the Vietnam Wall is and where the Korean War Memorial is. While we were there, we actually had a performance by the Army Drill team.”
From there, they made a trip to the Air and Space Museum, heading home from there, being surprised by a special mail call on the flight home and a welcome home ceremony at Midway Airport.
“These flights are as important as ever,” Meffley said. “This started just as a way to get World War II veterans to D.C., but now we primarily fly Vietnam veterans who came home to open animosity to their service that caused so many problems in that generation. We’re correcting that.”
Chester Lacey said he never had any negative experiences himself when he came home from the war and spoke of the war as an important growth period.
“It was an experience that I’m glad I went through, looking back,” Lacey said, “because it made me the man I am today.”
Hank Beckman is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
