North Country Honor Flight is part of a nationwide effort by a nonprofit organization to make sure veterans can travel to the capital and see the monuments dedicated to them and their fallen comrades. Along the way they shake hands with thankful citizens, open letters from schoolchildren and have hordes of people at each airport cheering over bands playing patriotic tunes.

Frizzell, 85, was waiting in his yard on Forest Hill Avenue for the entire escort to assemble and drive him to Plattsburgh, where he was to stay overnight and fly out to spend Saturday in Washington with 15 other veterans. He’s the only one from the Tri-Lakes, with others coming from Vermont and New Hampshire.

Frizzell said he’s known about the program for a couple of years and had five or six friends who’ve done it. They told him, “You’ve got to go.”

He had been to Washington 20 years ago but said there are many more memorials now that he has not seen. Asked what it means to him to go on the trip, he said, “I’m alive,” and chuckled.

Howard “Rusty” Frizzell is a Korean War veteran from Saranac Lake going on an Honor Flight to see war memorials in Washington, D.C. Here he is being picked up by a New York State Police escort at his home on Forest Hill Avenue Friday afternoon. He was to spend the night in Plattsburgh and fly to and from Washington Saturday. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)

Frizzell served in the Army in South Korea when he was 19 until he was 22. He said the armistice that technically ended the war had been signed, but there was still action going on between the two new countries.

“The North Koreans were always bugging ya,” Frizzell said. “There was stuff going on outside the small villages.”

His daughter, Sue Blanchard, set up the trip and is going as his guardian. She said her friend who took her father encouraged her to set it up.

“My girlfriend, Shelly Vaillancourt, she brought her dad, and he passed away this spring,” Blanchard said. “(Frizzell) had the paperwork from a couple years ago, but kept putting it off. Shelly said, ‘Do it now.'”

Frizzell said he’s likely to be one of the healthier veterans there. He joked about pushing them in wheelchairs from his wheelchair.

In just a couple of minutes, several fire engines and motorcyclists joined the state police car in the street.

As they pulled away, the sound of bagpipes playing “God Bless America” filled the neighborhood. Tom Browne, who lives across the street from Frizzell, saw that his neighbor was being picked up for an Honor Flight and had dashed inside to grab his bagpipes.

Browne said when he lived in South Carolina, the band he played in attended every Honor Flight sendoff they could, and he was thrilled to have another opportunity right in his front yard.