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Retirees' News
EPNG Retirees Recognized with Honor Flight to D.C.
Although some of them require assistance with mobility, all World War II
veterans stand tall in the eyes of admiring and appreciative Americans.
Some 280 veterans – two of them from Scurry County – were part of the Honor
Flight to the nation’s capital on April 12, 2011.
Dale Johnston and
Howard Boyd
– plus Boyd’s brother-in-law from New Mexico,
Stan McMahan
– joined other veterans from the West Texas area to visit the World War II
Memorial.
It all began Monday evening with a dinner in their honor. Veterans and their
escorts boarded 11 buses for a dinner at the Abilene Civic Center. En route,
veterans saw scores of patriotic Americans lining the parade route. Included in
the parade was a fire truck and Patriot Guard riders. All three men said they
felt fortunate to be in good physical condition as many of the veterans were in
wheelchairs and on walkers.
McMahan, a retiree of El Paso Natural Gas, was one of the oldest to make the
trip. At 91, McMahan has lived in Jal three times, the last since 1960.
He served in the Army Air Corps after being drafted in October 1941, just before
Pearl Harbor. During his 4-1/2 years in the service, he served three years in
the states with the medical division before getting a taste of thr infantry and
artillery on the Aleutian Islands.
Boyd said his daughter, Janet Knipe, read about the Honor Flight in the Midland
newspaper and sent the application to him. His brother-in-law, Stan McMahan,
withdrew his application for a flight from New Mexico and both noted on the
Abilene application that they wanted to travel together.
Serving from December 1942 to August 1945, Boyd was also in the Army Air Corps,
flying 29 missions on a B-17 as a belly gunner. After the war, Boyd returned to
the Air Force where he served a total of 12 years.
Boyd explained that at the time, his wife, Joyce, was expecting their first
child and that kept him from being deployed to Korea. “With her expecting, I
felt it was time to settle down and get a job.” Boyd and his wife have been
married for 62 years.
Boyd, now 87, moved to Snyder from Jal in 1970 and he retired from El Paso
Natural Gas in 1984.
Both Boyd and McMahan had been to Washington, D.C. before the monument was
completed, but said seeing the monument and the whole experience of other vets
from Arkansas and Florida gave “a different train of thought.”
McMahan, who lost his wife two years ago, said he spent most of his retirement
years traveling. Boyd mused that his brother-in-law had driven to all the state
capitals except for Hawaii. “If they ever build a bridge, I suspect he’ll do
that too.”
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