One of our Honor Flight heroes passed away Sunday.
DeWayne Mercier didn't tell anyone he was hurting.
The large pancreatic tumor was painful, but the World War II veteran knew he had been picked to fly to Washington, D.C., on a Stars and Stripes Honor Flight in May, so he kept it to himself.
Mercier flew to the nation's capital with 299 other World War II veterans and spent the day touring monuments and memorials. A large color photo of Mercier visiting the Marine Corps War Memorial with his youngest brother, Chuck, ran on the front page of the Journal Sentinel on May 3.
DeWayne Mercier, 92, died Sunday in Racine. The blue honor flight shirt he wore that day, along with photos of the trip and a memory book given to all of the veterans, will be on display in a special memorial at his funeral Thursday.
"It took a year to get him on the honor flight. He wasn't a man who talked about his pain; he never complained," said his daughter Kathy Klinkhammer, who accompanied her father on the flight. "We think he just wanted to get on this honor flight so much he didn't tell us anything was wrong with him."
Two more free flights for World War II veterans in southeastern Wisconsin are scheduled this year - Sept. 19 and Nov. 6 - and the veterans chosen for those flights already have been notified. Each of those flights will take 200 veterans plus another 200 guardians. Even with the 400 scheduled to travel this fall, the waiting list for future flights will be more than 500.
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Only Me - Sep 08, 2010 6:56 AM
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