At 7 a.m. this morning, veterans and their guardians will be sent on their way with a parade and appearance by “Thunder in the Burgh,” a Plattsburgh motorcycle group, as they make their way to Plattsburgh International Airport. After a tour of the Washington monuments, they will be welcomed home this evening at the Plattsburgh Barracks Veterans Park on the U.S. Oval.

The North Country Honor Flight has flown more than 900 veterans to Washington since 2013, according to a count on the organization’s website. There are two more flight dates this year: Sept. 6 and Oct. 4. Applications are considered on a rolling basis, with first priority given to older veterans.

North Country Honor Flight is a nonprofit organization that relies on donations to send veterans to the capital. It is part of the Honor Flight Network, a national organization. To find out more, fill out an application, or donate, visit northcountryhonorflight.org. Donations can also be mailed to North Country Honor Flight, P.O. Box 2644, Plattsburgh, NY 12901.

On Thursday, Assemblyman Billy Jones (D-Chateaugay Lake) presented Honor Flight organizers with a $50,000 check. These funds will go toward flight and travel expenses.

Gifford Hosler waves from the passenger seat as he is driven to Plattsburgh to depart on an Honor Flight to Washington D.C. by Saranac Lake Volunteer Fire Department Chief Michael Knapp on Friday. (Enterprise photo —Parker O’Brien)

“The North Country Honor Flight is an incredible organization that I am extremely proud to be able to support each and every year,” Jones said. “Showing support to our local heroes in such an incredible way, by sending them to our nation’s capital to be recognized for their service and dedication to our country, is an amazing opportunity and a great showing of our community’s appreciation of our local veterans.”

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Gifford Hosler, U.S. Army veteran

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Gifford Hosler still remembers the date he was drafted into the U.S. Army and sent to Vietnam, and the date he was released. Born in Saranac Lake, he lived in a house behind the post office for many years. On Feb. 11, 1969, he got the draft letter. At the time, he was a couple of years out of high school and working at a gas station.

Gary Lawrence, a Vietnam veteran and Lake Placid native, waves before departing from the Lake Placid fire station in a caravan of police vehicles and motorcycles on Friday ahead of this weekend’s honor flight. (Enterprise photo — Grace McIntyre)

When he got to Vietnam, Hosler was assigned to a team of advisors called Military Assistance Command Vietnam, or MACV. This was a group that had been sent in the early 1960s ahead of regular fighting units. Hosler became a radio operator in the Mekong Delta region in southern Vietnam.

As a radio operator, he worked eight-hour shifts alongside a Vietnamese operator and an interpreter. Because both Americans and French people had been in that region for many years, lots of the South Vietnamese people spoke English well.

“My interpreter spoke better English than I did,” Hosler said.

The Tactical Operations Center, where he worked, was the headquarters for the province, and they coordinated all sorts of communications across the region. The morning shift was spent taking care of daily operations, monitoring radio traffic as troops were being sent out to the field that day. His favorite shift, from 3 to 11 p.m., started after daily operations were over, but involved coordinating air traffic at night.

“I would talk to the spotter planes and the people that would call in airstrikes,” he said. “And, of course, I was always talking to some kind of helicopter.”

Gary Lawrence, right, trades stories with Sergeant Chad Blinn of the Lake Placid Police Department on Friday before departing for this weekend’s honor flight. (Enterprise photo — Grace McIntyre)

There were medivac helicopters to communicate with, and then he would call in when a passing aircraft needed the artillery fire to be paused for them to pass through. One night, he had a strange call from a pilot whose coordinates were far outside the map in front of him. It turned out to be a Pan Am jet passing by at 30,000 feet, asking for artillery clearance. Since the artillery went only about 1,000 feet into the air, he assured the pilot it was fine. The pilot was impressed that Hosler’s radio had even picked up on his signal.

Hosler turned 21 in Vietnam and was sent home Dec. 5, 1970. He ended up being in the Army for the same amount of time as his father, who had been drafted in 1943, just a couple of years before World War II ended. His father was an engineer who ended up attached to General George Patton, though Hosler doesn’t know if his father ever saw him.

When Hosler returned home from Vietnam, public opinion had turned sour against the war, and sometimes against the returning veterans. He fared alright, but a friend of his got spit on when he came home.

“I didn’t come back looking for recognition, I just came back to get home,” he said. “It may sound kind of silly, but one of the things that was pretty exciting is when I got out of the airplane at JFK, I went outside at eight o’clock and had a New York hot dog.”

When he arrived back in Saranac Lake, there was an understanding that a returning veteran would be offered their job back. The man he had worked under at the gas station had moved to the Chevrolet garage, now Curtis Lumber, so Hosler worked there for a bit before making a career working for the Postal Service.

In 1971, Hosler took up another type of service — volunteering with the Saranac Lake Volunteer Fire Department and rescue squad, which were combined at the time. He has served with the department for about 30 years in total, and has the distinction of being a part of the first EMT group north of Glens Falls.

“I’m not gonna brag, but we were highly thought of,” he said. “This is an outstanding fire department and rescue squad.”

With this trip to Washington, D.C., Hosler is looking forward to finding a friend’s name on the Vietnam Memorial wall, and getting a front row seat at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. This trip is part of what is making up for the lack of thanks he and his fellow soldiers received when they returned from combat. He said it’s been good to see more recognition of Vietnam veterans in recent years.

In fact, it was during a previous trip to D.C. that Hosler first heard the words, “welcome home.”

“Another veteran said that to me. I never heard that before,” he said.

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Gary Lawrence, U.S. Army veteran

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Lake Placid native Gary Lawrence was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1965 when he was around 21 years old. After basic training in Fort Dix, New Jersey, he was stationed at Fort Devens in Massachusetts. Then, in 1966, he was sent via ship to Vietnam for 11 months.

He was a part of the 196 Light Infantry Brigade, a newly formed unit that was meant to be for police action, but they ended up being sent to Vietnam when the Army was in need of a combat unit. They were stationed in Tay Ninh, not far from Saigon.

As a support battalion, his unit was tasked with bringing supplies to infantry forces in the field. It was more dangerous in the jungle, Lawrence said, but they still had to be careful when they were at base camp.

“We had mortars coming in and stuff like that,” he said. “You weren’t really safe anywhere.”

The camp was its own community, made of tents. The food wasn’t great, but they got used to it. They slept in tents that fit 10 to 12 cots. At first, the tents had dirt floors, but wooden floors were added eventually. It wasn’t a fun experience, Lawrence said, but he noted the military treated them well.

“We were fed well, and we were taken care of, I think, the best they could take care of us,” he said. “Thank God for the military.”

His time in Vietnam helped him to appreciate life in the U.S. The living conditions were much different in Vietnam at the time, and in a time of political upheaval, they never knew who they could trust.

When he arrived home, he worked some odd jobs before joining the village police department. He worked there for 20 years, retiring in 1988. Being from a small town, Lawrence said he felt sheltered from some of the negativity experienced by other Vietnam veterans, some of whom didn’t feel welcome at home.

“I didn’t notice any of that here, and I haven’t noticed any of that since,” he said. “I was treated as a veteran.”

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David Staszak, U.S. Army veteran

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It was his first year of college, and David Staszak was struggling. One night, he was talking over a beer with one of his close friends in a bar about what they should do.

“Because our fathers and uncles had all served in World War II, and because (John F.) Kennedy had talked about, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,’ — we decided to enlist,” Staszak recalled.

His friend chose to go into the Military Police, and Staszak chose to attend Officer Candidate School to become an officer.

“I was very lucky in terms of opportunities opening up for me,” he said. “The timing was right, and I was lucky to be there in the right place.”

Normally, it takes a college degree to get into OCS. And normally, officers would spend about six months stateside before being sent to Vietnam. However, when Staszak came through, they had just lowered the requirements so that he could get in without a degree. He ended up getting married on leave after OCS, and his request to be sent somewhere where he and his wife could get accustomed to life together before being separated was granted.

After one year in the U.S. and two years in Panama, Staszak was finally sent to Vietnam. Once again, the expedited requirements for officers meant that he climbed the ranks faster than usual. He arrived in Vietnam as a company commander instead of a platoon leader, which he said made all the difference when he found himself in the central highlands of Vietnam.

“I did not have to deal with tunnels or rice paddies,” he said, referencing some common images from the war. “We had caves to deal with in the central highlands.”

The memories from that time are somewhat of a blur, Staszak said. He remembers shooting and being shot at. He remembers witnessing death.

“But if you were to ask me, I would want to tell you about the time I saw an elephant in the wild,” he said.

Or he would want to talk about the time they set up an ambush with trip wires rigged to set off Claymore mines, and ended up killing a tiger. At the time, it was a sort of point of macho pride.

“I mean, now it’s like, one less tiger in the world — that’s not nice,” he said. “But on the other hand, (it’s) the baddest, stealthiest creature out there, and we killed it.”

After getting off active duty in Vietnam, Staszak joined the Army Reserves. He got the chance to travel around the country, often doing different kinds of consulting work. He was a part of a unit that taught supply, paperwork and mechanics.

Staszak retired from the Army Reserve in 1991. After earning an MBA from the University of Buffalo, he eventually worked for the Episcopal Church Home of Western New York, a nonprofit, long-term health care organization. He ended up spending 24 years there, the words of John F. Kennedy still serving as a “guiding light” in his career.

“Even though I wasn’t doing hands-on care — I was running the business — I could still go up and talk to somebody and visit with somebody, and play chess with somebody who my effort was benefiting,” he said. “That was important to me.”

Having lived in Buffalo his whole life, except for his time in the Army, Staszak had always dreamed of having a second home in the Adirondacks. After some financial hardship, a second home became unrealistic, but he did have the opportunity to work with the American Management Association, which brought him to Saranac Lake in 2005.

Staszak is looking forward to this weekend’s trip, even though he feels too young and healthy to be going. His best friend and brother-in-law, Donald Wood, will be going as Staszak’s guardian. At 91, Wood is more than 10 years older than him. They met in the Reserves in the 1970s and have been going on adventures together for most of their lives — camping, canoeing, running and biking.

“I’m thinking that this is going to be the last expedition for the two guys,” Staszak said.