Project Manager for Heroes

Mike Pungercar, of Springfield, Oregon, is a Hero Project Manager. There's no doubt about it in my book.

I read about Mike's project in an article, Flights give vets the hero treatment, in the online edition of the Register-Guard of Eugene, Oregon. Mike is project manager for South Willamette Valley Honor Flight, a part of the nationwide Honor Flight project. This project's mission is to take veterans of World War II on a visit to the World War II Memorial in Washington, DC.

As we are reminded in the article, we are losing this generation of heroes at a rate of about 850 per day. The day will soon come when we will no longer be able to honor them in person. We'll only have the memories of their sacrifice. And, a little farther down the road, it will only be something to read about in history books.

Today, though, we are honored to still be able to know them, to speak with them and to express our gratitude for their service. Maybe their actions in the war were heroic, or maybe they were only relatively routine. But, as far as I'm concerned, they all played an important part in an effort that helped preserve our way of life, our world.

My father fought in the South Pacific as a tail gunner for the Army Air Corps and later as a member of the Military Police corps. He was involved in action all along the chain of islands that lead from Wake Island around the southern rim of the Pacific through New Guinea and Guadalcanal, finally ending up in Tokyo. He didn't talk much about it. When he did,  at the time, I didn't realize just what he had gone through. Now, in retrospect, I am sad that I didn't understand, while he was here, what he experienced. I know I still don't fully grasp it. I've not been in combat situations, so I can't grasp it.

At least, thanks to books and movies and other sources, I do better understand what he and so many other men and women did for us. Daddy died over thirty years ago, before I understood, as I do today. I never paid him, in person, the honor he deserved.

So, Mike Pungercar is a Hero Project Manager. A hero for heroes.

And, today, I promise I will, in some way, contribute to Mike's project. Will you?