For Lance Stephensen, every day is Memorial Day. He works nearly full time as the volunteer director of Honor Flight of Idaho, the group that flies World War II veterans to the nation’s capital to visit their memorial.
The story of how that came to happen began in Vietnam, and on Mountain Home Air Force Base.
Stephensen’s father was a fighter pilot stationed at the base. Lance Stephensen will never forget the day – he was 10 then – when he and his sister were called out of class at the base school.
“When we got home, a staff car pulled up in front of the house. They told Mom that Dad was an MIA. We didn’t even know what that meant then.”
Their father, Col. Mark L. Stephensen, had been shot down while flying a reconnaissance mission in North Vietnam. His remains weren’t found and identified until 1988. He was an MIA for 21 years.
Stephensen did what he could to learn his father’s fate. He wrote letters to congressmen. He watched every North Vietnamese propaganda film he could in hopes of catching a glimpse of his dad. He served as director of the Boise Valley POW/MIA Corp. and as state coordinator of the National League of POW/MIA Families.
He was speaking about his POW/MIA work at Nampa’s Warhawk Air Museum when he learned that a group of Idaho WWII veterans had been rejected for an Honor Flight from Spokane because they weren’t from Washington.
“The hub was in Spokane, and they wanted to give priority to veterans from Washington,” he said. “It broke my heart that these Idaho guys who had applied and were looking forward to it couldn’t go. So I asked what it would take to get a hub in Idaho.”
What it took, essentially, was Stephensen. He felt so bad for the Idaho vets that he contacted the Honor Flight Network headquarters in Springfield, Ohio, did the legwork and started a hub in Boise.
“I thought I had about 30 vets I needed to take care of,” he said. “In less than two weeks, I was 130 applications behind.”
Twenty-eight veterans and 20 guardians boarded the first Honor Flight from Boise in 2012. A second flight followed last year.
“Many of them had never been to D.C. before. One said he thought everybody had forgotten them. It was heartbreaking.”
The average age of the veterans on the Idaho Honor Flights: 92. Five were in the first wave of the D-Day invasion. Former Marine Don Brown of Boise was on Mount Suribachi when the iconic photo was taken of Marines raising the flag there, one of the most reproduced photos of all time.
“The flight was a wonderful experience,” Brown said. “I’d never been back east before. People clapped and shook our hands when we showed up. It was very gratifying.”
“A lot of these guys would never get to see our memorial otherwise,” WWII army veteran Roger Guernsey said. “And Honor Flight is such a fabulous program. It covers everything. I took $100 in spending money and spent $5 of it.”
“One of the guys told me the trip was the best thing he’d ever done,” Stephensen said. “I said, ‘Wait a minute – you got married and had kids and everything.’ And he said, ‘No, this is the most honorable thing I’ve ever done.'”
Everywhere they went, the veterans got the heroes’ welcome they so deeply deserve.
“Water cannons hose down the plane at every stop, an honor usually reserved for retiring pilots,” Stephensen said. “The joke was that we had the cleanest plane in Southwest’s fleet.
“The pilots and flight attendants shake their hands and thank them for what they did during the war. When the flight attendants announce that they’re honored to have members of the greatest generation aboard, everyone applauds. People in airports shake their hands and thank them for their service. It humbles them, and they’re already humble.
At the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, four of the veterans were selected to participate in a wreath-laying ceremony during the changing of the guard.
“Sixty military people in uniform were there for the ceremony, “Stephensen said. “They all shook their hands and hugged them. I couldn’t stop crying.”
His only regret, he says, “is that we can’t do five flights a year. I’d like to start doing two a year, in May and September.”
The trip costs $1,000 for each veteran and guardian. Southwest donated $1.3 million in flights for Honor Flight groups nationally, but those run out this year. Stephensen initially paid many of the costs himself, but now the group relies on donations.
In time the program will transition to Korea and Vietnam veterans.
But for WWII vets, time is growing short. Half of the 14,000 who were living in Idaho in 2011 have died since then. At that rate, it won’t be long before the soldiers and sailors who saved the world from tyranny will be gone. The time to thank them for their service is now.
To donate or to apply for a flight, click on http://www.honorflightidaho.com.

Tim Woodward’s column appears in The Idaho Statesman  every other Sunday and is posted on http://www.woodwardblog.com the following Mondays. Contact him at woodwardcolumn@hotmail.com.

 

If you’re human, you’ve formed attachments to material objects.
Cars, for example. Cars are at or near the top of the list of things we cherish. People name cars, bestow human qualities on them. My late sister was loathe to part with every car she ever owned, driving the wheels off of them and mourning them when they died. But certain other objects of our affection sneak up on us. They captivate us without our knowing it.
The old clock in my living room, for example. It’s a wall clock with a pendulum and chimes. Not a valuable antique that has to be wound, but one of more recent vintage, powered by a battery. I bought it at, of all places, The Idaho Statesman’s break room.
It was made by a then Statesman employee named Red Wilder. Red worked in the back shop, the now dated term for the part of the building where type was set. In his spare time, he built clocks and sold them to people he knew, often fellow employees. I’ve forgotten how much mine cost, but $125 comes to mind. It was a bargain considering the amount of work he put into it. But for a young reporter in those days, it was still a fair amount of money – and an indication of my regard for Red’s craftsmanship.
I’d forgotten how long we’d had the clock until last month, when I re-read the inscription on a brass plaque beneath the dial – “Handcrafted by DeVaughn ‘Red’ Wilder, 1982.” I read the inscription while gloomily taking the clock down from its spot on the living room wall. After 32 years of keeping perfect time, its time appeared to have run out.
Its battery has to be replaced annually. I put a new one in this spring, but a week later the clock stopped running. Only the second hand continued to move. Thinking the new battery might have been defective, I replaced it – to no avail. The battery hadn’t died. The clock had.
Only then did I realize how much that old clock meant to us. It kept us on time for work, school, appointments, social engagements, graduations, weddings and the other large and small events that make up our lives. It never gained or lost a minute. When other clocks failed, it kept right on ticking.
For 32 years.
How many things are that reliable in an age of disposable everything? When our refrigerator stopped working a few years ago and had to be replaced, the salesman encouraged us to buy an extended warranty.
“The average lifespan of a new refrigerator,” he explained, “is about four years.”
“Excuse me? It sounded like you said four years.”
“Sad but true,” he replied. “They don’t make them like they used to.”
The ice maker on the new refrigerator, incidentally, gave out in a little over a year. The repairman said he couldn’t repair or replace just the ice maker. He had to replace the whole door.
We were glad we bought the extended warranty.
This spring, I had to replace the lawnmower that had run faithfully for some 20 summers. On the last mowing of last summer, it exploded. Literally, as in flying shrapnel. I spent hours online perusing lawnmower reviews. One after another complained of parts breaking right out of the box. I was leaning toward a brand that sounded reasonably dependable until the guy who aerated our yard said he bought one and the wheels broke the first time he used it.
Red’s clock, on the other hand, never missed a beat. Thirty-two years not only of running perfectly, but of adding traditional beauty to two living rooms. It was a fixture in our lives when our son was born in 1982, and when our great grandson was born this year.
Only when it stopped working did I realize how much I loved that old clock, and how much I’d miss it.
The thing to do, obviously, was to call Red and ask if he could fix it. But I hadn’t seen him in years and didn’t know if he was still around, or, for that matter, still living. A Google search yielded a picture of him in uniform on the deck of a submarine at Pearl Harbor, but no phone number.
A former co-worker, however, had his number and was happy to give it to me. It was good to connect with Red again after so long. He no longer works on clocks, but he recommended a shop that did.
That was a surprise. I thought clock repairmen had gone the way of buggy makers and, sure enough, the shop had closed. But Google (how did we survive without it?) supplied the names of others that hadn’t. I took it to a shop on Vista Avenue, which was like stepping back in time. Clocks everywhere. On the hour, the place erupts with everything from chimes to chirping cuckoos.
“We can replace the movement,” the man behind the counter said. “One like the one that’s in it is $150. If you don’t need it to chime, I can get one for $40. It should be ready in three weeks.”
The old clock’s absence left a disproportionately large hole in our living room. It took the possibility of losing it to make me realize that it belongs in the same category as some of my favorite cars, guitars and other possessions I’ve loved, lost and would give anything to have back. Whatever it costs and however long it takes to fix it, it’s worth it.

Tim Woodward’s column appears in The Idaho Statesman every other Sunday and is posted on woodwardblog.com the following Mondays. Contact him at woodwardcolumn@hotmail.com.