Ron Newsum had to make a decision about a contract for a 737 jet back in early 2010.

The contract with Sun Country Airlines would cost $72,000. His then-new organization, Brushy Creek Area Honor Flight, had $3,000 in the bank.

The Fort Dodge man signed the contract.

It was a leap of faith that paid off spectacularly. The first Brushy Creek Area Honor Flight trip to Washington, D.C., with a jet full of World War II veterans was completed in the spring of 2010. Two more trips were made that year to take veterans to see the nation’s war memorials.

Now, 14 years after that first flight, 3,500 veterans from 240 communities have traveled on 25 Honor Flights.

While money might have been a worry when Newsum signed that first contract, it isn’t any more. The Brushy Creek Area Honor Flight has no corporate sponsors, but a steady flow of donations and fundraisers has meant that no veteran has ever had to pay for their Honor Flight trip.

“We have not had to beg for one dime,” Newsum said.

The Brushy Creek Area Honor Flight program is a product of Newsum’s vision. He had heard about the national Honor Flight program with chapters across the country taking World War II veterans to Washington. And he wanted to get his stepfather, the late Clem Hentges, to the nation’s capital. Hentges was a Navy veteran who had served on small PT (patrol torpedo) boats in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Newsum got to work and brought some other area residents together to form a committee that would conduct the Honor Flights.

One of the first things the group had to do was pick a name. Newsum recalled that in 2009, there was an Honor Flight operation in Des Moines calling itself Central Iowa and one in Mason City calling itself Northern Iowa. With two obvious possible names already taken, the committee picked Brushy Creek after the stream that feeds into the huge lake at Brushy Creek State Recreation Area.

Hentges was aboard that first Honor Flight voyage. Newsum wiped tears from his eyes as he watched his stepfather being escorted out of the plane and onto the tarmac at Dulles International Airport in the Virginia suburbs of Washington.

Since that day, Newsum has worked tirelessly organizing a succession of Honor Flights.

Honor Flights are not the first patriotic endeavor Newsum has launched for his community.

An American flag flies at the top of a tall pole in the middle of the Des Moines River thanks to one of his ideas.

He calls the project Old Glory on the River. The first flag was raised at that site on June 14, 2004, Flag Day.

Newsum said he got the idea for the flagpole while he was part of a cleanup effort on the banks of the Des Moines River in advance of a dragon boat festival, which was held on the river instead of at Badger Lake at that time.

Newsum said while working, he looked at a pier in the middle of the water which once supported the old Bennett Viaduct and thought, “what a beautiful place for an American flag.”

He got permission from Mayor Will Patterson to put a flagpole on the bridge pier.

Crews from McGough Construction Co. bored a seven-foot deep hole in the pier and placed a 77-foot tall flagpole in it.

Whenever the flag needs to be replaced, Fort Dodge firefighters go out in a boat and raise a new one.

“It’s been such a fulfilling project,” he said.

He is retired from a career in insurance and financial services. That background prepared him for one of his earliest community service efforts, when he volunteered to help senior citizens figure out the various health insurance plans available to them.

Newsum, who served in the Iowa Air National Guard, received the Veteran of the Year Award from the Fort Dodge Veterans Council. But he isn’t motivated by plaques or certificates.

“The more you give, the more you receive back,” he said.