General Colin Powell visited today with six Honor Flight hubs at the WWII Memorial today. Among them were Asheville/ Buncobe County, Louisiana Honor Air, Honor Flight Columbus, Quad City, Iowa, Honor Flight Michigan, and Honor Flight Dayton for a total of 600 veterans.  General Powell made short work of shaking hands with everyone and photographer Brown was barely able to keep up with him.  We owe his visit to Judy Lemmons who made the arrangements.  Judy had an elaborate plan to photograph everyone in an “orderly fashion.”  It was a great plan but “herding cats” is “herding cats” and our vets didn’t get to be 85 plus by being shy.

Fortunately, General Powell must have been a drill seargeant at some point in his career and was able to help with the organization of the troops. Our photo volunteer Kari Beardsley outdid herself photographically. The whole take was uploaded before the vets got home.  You can see the pictures at the Photo Site.  I’ve made up a contact sheet of images of our volunteers. The weather was wonderful and I haven’t made that many pictures in such a short times since I used to work as a magazine photographer at the White House.  Too much like work which is why I gave it up.  Congratulations to everyone on a job well done!!!

Honor Flight is featured in Jewel of the Mall: World War II Memorial book.