Ronald Andreasen, of Fonda, earned his seat while fixing armored vehicles in South Vietnam.

The two area men will join more than 100 other veterans on the Sept. 18 Brushy Creek Area Honor Flight voyage to Washington, D.C., to see the nation’s war memorials.

On Wednesday evening, those veterans gathered with their families and flight organizers at the Webster County Fairgrounds for a banquet to prepare for the upcoming voyage and get to know each other.

For some, the trip will be their first visit to the nation’s capital.

-Messenger photo by Bill Shea
Jim Stotser, left, a Navy veteran from Iowa Falls, and Ronald Andreasen, an Army veteran from Fonda, attended the Brushy Creek Area Honor Flight banquet Wednesday evening at the Webster County Fairgrounds. Both are traveling to Washington, D.C., on the Sept. 18 flight.

“I went through it in a semi, but I never stopped,” said Williams, who served in the Navy from 1969 to 1970.

He said his father, Donald Williams Sr., of Webster City, went on a previous Honor Flight.

“He said how it was and I thought well, I want to go,” he said.

Several of the veterans present Wednesday said they had been postponing applying for a seat on an Honor Flight so that other veterans could go.

“I’ve been waiting to make sure all the older veterans got to go,” Andreasen said.

-Messenger photo by Bill Shea
Air Force veteran Allan Buhr, of Spirit Lake, attended the Brushy Creek Area Honor Flight banquet Wednesday, with his wife, Diana. He said he has never been to Washington, D.C., before and is excited about the Sept. 18 trip to the nation's capital.

He served in an Army armored cavalry regiment from 1969 to 1970. He was a mechanic and sometimes a driver, for tanks and armored personnel carriers. His unit was in the Lowlands area of South Vietnam.

Once a vehicle he was driving hit a mine. His flak jacket absorbed 17 pieces of metal from the blast.

Andreasen spent some time visiting with Navy veteran Jim Stotser, of Iowa Falls, before the banquet. Stotser fixed radars on the planes aboard the aircraft carrier USS Midway from 1974 to 1978. Like Andreasen, he deferred applying for the Honor Flight so that others would have a chance to go.

“I kind of forgot about it,” he said.

He has been to Washington, D.C.previously and has seen all of the war memorials except the World War II Memorial.

-Messenger photo by Bill Shea
Veterans and their families filled the main auditorium building at the Webster County Fairgrounds Wednesday evening for the banquet held in advance of each of the flights.

“All of them are very nice,” he said.

A father-son team of veterans will be on the flight. Larry Meints, of Sheffield, served in the Navy from 1966 to 1969. David Meints, of Belmond, served in the Army Reserve from 1989 to 2004. He is going on the flight to assist his father.

Although he was in the Navy, Larry Meints always was stationed ashore, first at a supply center in San Diego, California, and then in Saigon, South Vietnam, where he was a payroll clerk.

“I was told if you ever get a chance, do it,” he said, explaining what inspired him to go on the Honor Flight.

He has never been to Washington before.

“I just want to look at everything that’s there,” he said.

Air Force veteran Allan Buhr, of Spirit Lake, has also never been to Washington before.

“That’s what I’m excited about,” he said.

He was a jet engine mechanic in the mid-1960s.

He joked that he enlisted in the Air Force to see the world, but spent all of his military career at three different Air Force bases in Texas.

The Brushy Creek Area Honor Flight will depart from Fort Dodge Regional Airport early in the morning of Sept.18. It will take the veterans to Dulles International Airport in the Virginia suburbs of Washington. There, the veterans will board buses for a tour of the memorials and Arlington National Cemetery. The flight will return to Fort Dodge that night.

This will be the 26th flight of the Brushy Creek Area Honor Flight, which started in 2010.