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his year has certainly been a challenging one for all of us, and I hope our veterans, their families, our volunteers, and our supporters are safe, healthy and navigating this landscape as best they can.

When we wrapped up our 12th flight season with our 95th flight in October 2019, we were already beginning to plan for 2020 and hitting that amazing 100th flight milestone. Like with many things this past spring, we had to hit the pause button, making the difficult decision to postpone and ultimately cancel our 2020 flight season.

But rest assured, our mission at Honor Flight Chicago has not paused, not for one minute. We remain more commited than ever in building awareness and helping Americans realize the debt of gratitude we owe to our senior war heroes. As important as our flight days are, they are in fact just one of the many ways we honor, thank and inspire.

This summer, our volunteers embarked on a significant outreach program, conducting wellness checks and delivering yard signs and window decals to publicly thank the almost 3,000 veterans on our waitlist, many of whom are pictured on the cover of this report. Though only a small gesture of appreciation, this project elicited an emotional response and boosted morale during this isolating time. We also hosted a virtual flight on our website and through social media that was attended by almost 4,000 participants, highlighting just how impactful our day of honor is to veterans and their families.

We launched “Honor. Thank. Inspire.,” a veterans’ story podcast, which is a wonderful platform for our veterans to share their stories and first-hand accounts as witnesses to history.

And with students across the Chicagoland area having to adapt to a new learning environment, pushing forward with our Operation Education initiative has now become an even more important priority. In preparation for Veterans Day, we compiled a library of veteran video and written interviews for educators to easily access and integrate into their lesson plans. Titled “Many Faces, Many Voices, One Mission.,” this project also seeks to expand our outreach into underrepresented communities and schools. We couldn’t be more excited about the impact we are already having and the potential ahead of us.

We are eager to resume our flights but will only do so when science says its safe. We may not have been able to bring our heroes to visit their memorials in D.C. this year, but we are incredibly proud of the work Honor Flight Chicago is doing to continue to honor, thank and inspire.

Even in the midst of a pandemic, our veterans have not been forgotten. Our mission continues.

Early on in the pandemic, “drive-by parades” became all the rage to celebrate milestones such as birthdays and graduations. Our volunteers latched onto the idea for our own senior heroes, focusing on aiding family and friends of our alumni with previously scheduled parties that were upended by COVID.

The very first birthday parade came early in April when WWII D-Day and Battle of Okinawa veteran John Ullinskey was feted by his local community with the help of several dozen vehicles from Honor Flight Chicago. The popularity of the idea spread; while family and friends of the veterans were responsible for organizing each parade and for soliciting the assistance of local police and fire departments, our volunteers were at the ready to stage a “show of force” with spirit and festively decorated vehicles.

Honor Flight Chicago volunteers participated in parades all over Chicagoland from Northwest Indiana to the South Side to the Northwest suburbs, celebrating milestone birthdays from 80 to 100 and many in between.