I arrived at the WWII Memorial to see a clump of plastic raincoats and umbrellas and there was Senator Dole in the midst of the early morning crowd.  The rain soon turned torrential and lightning began to strike and he and Mrs. Dole went to the car for a bit. We thought we would convince him to go home and we did but as he drove out, I noticed him looking over at the Memorial and the vets and I had this feeling he would be back.  I was right.  He smiled and said “I got a haircut…” meaning he had given us all the slip and was free to hang around the Memorial and hang he did for some two hours.  

And just as he returned, the clouds began to clear and five or six buses showed up and with them Jim McLaughln who pitched and took pictures with me.  Between the two of us, we must have gone through a couple of hundred photos and in the end the sun came out, the birds were chirping and it was sunnyville in DC!  I believe that Honor Flight is blessed with good weather and blessed with veterans who really don’t care about the weather anyway.  It was just another great day on the Mall.  My new waterproof camera worked great as you can see in the accompanying photo pages.

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