A retired Camas paper mill employee recently had an opportunity to visit several sites in Washington, D.C., as part of the Honor Flight program.
Wilbert Kalmbach, a World War II veteran, and his daughter Maria Dunn saw The Lincoln Memorial, Air Force and Marine Corps memorials and a Vietnam memorial that honors the nurses who served.
They also witnessed the Changing of the Guard at Arlington National Cemetery.
Kalmbach, 86, remembered an especially emotional moment at the WWII memorial. He encountered a 2-year old girl with her parents.
She held a small American flag and had a red ribbon in her hair.
“Samantha said, ‘Thank you for serving,’ Kalmbach recalled. “Her daddy said, ‘These are the veterans I told you about, remember?'”
“He was talking to her like an adult,” Kalmbach added. “That struck me.”
Kalmbach also talked to several eighth-grade students from Ohio.
“They came over and congratulated us,” he said. “The boys were gentlemen.”
Kalmbach told them knowledge is useless unless it is shared, and skill breeds success.
“So autograph your work with excellence,” he said.
Kalmbach described the trip as being similar to a family reunion.
“We were strangers, yet we held that common bond — I have your back — that kind of feeling,” Kalmbach said. “We spent a lot of time comparing what we did and where it happened and mixed in a lot of humor, joy, happiness and love.”
