They weren’t in trouble. Far from it. O’Neil and his daughter were about to embark on the Honor Flight, a service that brings veterans down to the capital in Washington, D.C. to see the monuments erected in their honor.

On Saturday morning, 14 local veterans and their guardians — relatives, friends, and volunteers who come along to help out — left Plattsburgh for the historic journey.

The sheriff’s cars pulled out in the dawn with all their lights flashing, and an escort appeared.

“Over a hundred motorcyclists did the escort with them. People came out, they were standing on their lawns,” Maggie remembered. “Even at that early hour of the morning, like 300 people came out to the airport to see them off.”

The group of veterans that went on the plane to Washington, D.C., and the two flight leaders, Gary (left rear) and Julie (right rear) Liberty (Photo provided by Margaret O’Neil)

Fire trucks with ladders extended, and American flags hanging from the ladders, lined the roadway, so the cars drove under the flags. When the veterans got on the airplane and got ready to take off, two fire trucks made a water cannon salute, jetting an arc of water into the air for the plane to taxi through.

And once they were aloft, the plane turned around.

“I thought maybe they forgot something and we had to go back,” said O’Neil. “But they were doing a flyover for the folks on the runway.”

Once the plane arrived in Baltimore, there was a huge crowd waiting. Even as they went through the airport, the celebrations and ceremony continued:

“A guy in Colonial dress escorted them through the airport. He went ahead ringing a bell, announcing ‘Make way for the North Country Veterans!’ People came out and clapped and cheered for them,” said Maggie. “People who were in the airport waiting for their plane, people who worked in the concessions. My father said he’d never had so many people shake his hand and thank him for his service.”

The Honor Flight organization is a non-profit “dedicated to providing veterans with honor and closure,” begun by a retired Air Force Captain, Earl Morse. After the World War II Veterans Memorial was completed in Washington in 2004, Morse realized that for many veterans it wasn’t physically or financially possible for them to make the trip to see it.

Many of them, he knew, would die without ever having gone to D.C. He put the idea of flying them there for free to his aero club, and beginning with six planes flown by volunteers in Dayton, Ohio in 2005, the Honor Flights were born.

For Robert O’Neil, it was the trip of a lifetime. Born and raised in Bloomingdale, he’s lived here his whole life except for his Army years, serving in the Korean conflict in 1951 and part of 1952. He was already married at age 20 when he went in, and his first daughter was born while he was overseas.

“That was the biggest reason I came back,” said O’Neil. “When you’re married, you don’t want to stay in the Army.

“Korea wasn’t a very beautiful country then. Everything was knocked down. It was a lot of hills and rivers. You’d go up a hill and down and up and on the other side there was another hill. It’s an awfully hilly country.”

“Actually,” he said, “the food wasn’t bad. We complained about it, but when you look back, it wasn’t that bad.”

He had an option to get out at 21 months, instead of 24, so he took it. For some years he drove a delivery truck for Norman’s wholesale grocery in Bloomingdale, and then he was a prison guard for thirty years. He and his wife Shirley raised seven children.

“I never ate spaghetti before I was in the service,” said O’Neil. “I eat it all the time now, but the first time I had it, it was frozen. We were going somewhere, on a march, and we had C-rations, and that’s what we had. Frozen spaghetti. Eat it, or go without!”

Maggie applied for the Honor Flight last year. North Country Honor Flights go three to five times a year, during the warm weather. Last year, she said, they couldn’t get in, as the organization was trying to catch up with a backlog of earlier applications. The average age of WWII veterans is 92 years old, so the organization is pressing to get them to D.C. while they can.

Even though O’Neil doesn’t use a wheelchair, all the Honor Flight veterans are escorted around in wheelchairs. He said it makes the procession move quicker.

Once he knew he was going, though, O’Neil started taking Fit for Life classes. He wanted to make sure he could walk around once he got there.

“We seen the Pentagon, the Capitol Building, the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials,” he remembered. “We went to the Korean War Memorial, the World War II Memorial — that was really impressive — to the Vietnam Memorial, and to Arlington National Cemetery and saw the changing of the guard. I did get up and walk around,” said O’Neil. “Especially at the World War II Memorial.”

“It was some trip, all right,” he said. “Something you never forget.”