HONOR FLIGHT

20 Bemidji area veterans to partake in spring Honor Flight

TJ Rhodes — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 12:30:00 GMT

BEMIDJI — Around 20 Bemidji area veterans are set to take off for Honor Flight of ND/MN's seasonal honor flight to Washington, D.C., on April 20.

Honor flights help veterans celebrate and commemorate their tenure alongside others who served in the United States Armed Forces with a weekend journey filled with camaraderie.

And a robust community effort ensures the veterans can go, free of charge.

Ride for the Troops' Bemidji chapter presented a $3,400 check to Honor Flight of ND/MN alongside four of the 20 area veterans on Tuesday, March 4, at the Bemidji Veterans Home, further cementing its role in the community effort that has sent over 2,000 North Dakota and Minnesota veterans to D.C since 2007.

Donations like this are part of the Veterans Honor Flight of ND/MN's mission to deliver as many area veterans as possible to D.C. to honor respective memorials. The nonprofit cannot orchestrate the flights alone as it can cost an estimated $1,700 per vet — hence the need for community support.

This trip will be no different from honor flights held in the past.

Area veterans will coalesce alongside others from around Minnesota and North Dakota in Grand Forks before departing. The veterans will spend time in the city, view different memorials, and enjoy food and company while making new friends and greeting old ones. The troupe will spend the weekend in Washington, D.C., before coming back home on April 22.

Wendell Affield, a Navy veteran, will take the April trip and spoke about two important aspects of the honor flight: camaraderie and the wait list.

"The Honor Flight is just a wonderful connection opportunity for veterans," Affield said. "For example, this morning, I was messaging back and forth with a fellow (veteran) that's going and we are really looking forward to meeting. Here's just a little trivial trivia thing: Our application started in 2023. (Since then) two of the veterans that were on the original list passed away. So, it's important for veterans to get out there (and enter the wait list)."

Tom Strassburg is another Navy veteran who will be part of the flight and is excited to see the memorials that Washington has to offer.

"This, to me, is to go see the Vietnam (Veterans Memorial) wall because I have two friends that are on there from my boat and then it's got three guys from Bemidji that are on the wall; I want to see their names," Strassburg said. "To see all the other memorials is going to be pretty exciting for me too."

Affield and Strassburg were joined by two Air Force veterans, Pat Winkler and Wayne Stefh, during the check ceremony.

To join the Honor Flight of ND/MN wait list, visit veteranshonorflightofndmn.org or call (218) 284-6667. Future flights are still being planned. Veterans at the top of the list are chosen first — those with health issues are expedited on the wait list. Funding dictates how many veterans make each flight.

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WATCH HERE: Look back at as Honor Flight veterans from WWII, Korea and Vietnam build unexpected connections

Tracy Briggs — Sat, 11 Nov 2023 11:04:00 GMT

FARGO — No doubt many of you know about Honor Flight. Some of you have flown on trips to Washington, D.C., as an honored veteran or with a loved one who is. Maybe you volunteered or worked on the medical staff or with the media.

But the new documentary “Bridging Generations — Honor Flight from WWII to Korea and Vietnam,” is shedding new light on one element of the trips (established nationwide in 2005 to honor veterans with a free trip to the nation’s capital) that still brings a tear to my eye.

I’ve been talking about Honor Flight since I started working on the WDAY World War II Honor Flight project back in the fall of 2006. I’ve done countless speeches to service groups and schools and talked way too much about it to anyone who might happen to bring it up as we pass in the frozen food aisle of the grocery store. (I can only imagine how much ice cream melted in shopping carts as I waxed eloquent about the project I love, while some poor soul tried to get away from me).

I’ve watched as WDAY-TV has done award-winning news stories and documentaries on the local flights, now called Veterans Honor Flight of North Dakota/Minnesota. Forum Communications also put together a 10-year anniversary book in 2017. So on this Veterans Day 2023, you might think there is nothing new to be said.

I disagree. And rather than risk any more drawn-out conversations and melted ice cream I’ll explain why here.

It involves one intriguing aspect of Honor Flight — an unexpected one for many of us who’ve worked on the project — that hasn’t been talked about in great detail.

The story that still gives me chills

It starts with a story from an early flight in 2007. I get chills every time I tell it.

A man came up to me in the airport in Washington D.C. as we were waiting to get back on the plane to Fargo after one of our trips. He was on the trip as an escort for his dad, a WWII veteran, and was himself a Vietnam veteran.

He proceeded to tell me that while he and his father had a good relationship, they never spoke to each other about their time serving in their respective wars. He told me he felt he had to protect his dad from hearing about the horrors he faced, and his father was probably doing the same in trying to protect him.

But as they walked through the memorials that day, from the expanse of the World War II Memorial, alongside the lifelike statues of the Korean War Veterans Memorial and past the 58,000 names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall, something started to happen.

Their internal walls started to come down.

The man told me, with tears in his eyes, that he and his father started to talk about their respective war experiences. At first, they were tentative as they began to share stories of how scared they were, the bloodshed they witnessed and the friends they lost. As the conversation continued, they went deeper unveiling what had been hidden for so many years.

I’ll never forget what he said next.

“It turns out we had eerily similar experiences,” he said as he looked down and shook his head.

He told me until that day they had never talked so openly. The man said he couldn’t help but think of the years wasted when they could have been there to support each other when the nightmares got too real, but at least they connected now before it was too late.

This wasn’t the only story I heard like this. One daughter told me a few years after she flew with her dad that the last years of his life were the best. He was less guarded, more open and happier — the trip being the catalyst for emotional healing.

Others have written that their veteran mothers and fathers who went on the trip chose to be buried in their Honor Flight shirts or jackets.

Family bonds

When National Honor Flight kicked off its trips shortly after the construction of the World War II Memorial in 2004 and as WDAY (now Veterans Honor Flight) got on board in late 2006, I think those of us planning the trips expected a few things to happen.

We knew veterans might tell us they didn’t deserve the accolades they were getting (they did). We suspected that they’d enjoy time spent reminiscing about their time in the service with other veterans and that seeing some of the memorials might stir up some strong emotions, both good and bad.

But I never expected to see how Honor Flight was helping build family bonds — deepening the connection between fathers, mothers, sons and daughters who were learning more about one another while pushing wheelchairs or taking photos.

When I stepped away from Honor Flight in 2017, Veterans Honor Flight was busy taking both WWII and Korean War veterans on the trips. Vietnam veterans were still waiting for their turn. I asked the group’s leader Jane Matejcek to give me a call when Vietnam veterans started making up the majority of their travelers. After all, they deserved the same coverage we gave to the WWII and Korean War veterans when they started taking their local trips in 2007 and 2015.

The COVID-19 pandemic delayed that call. But it came in the late summer of 2022. Jane and the rest of the board let videographer Ezra Van Den Einde and I come along on the next three trips to try and tell the story, not just about the Vietnam veterans being the newest travelers on the flights, but how for some, life had come full circle.

One of them was Paul Everson, a Vietnam veteran from Greenbush, Minnesota, who helped his WWII veteran father Jeff Everson on a flight in 2007. This time around, Paul was the honored vet who asked his son, Todd, who served in Iraq and Bosnia, to join him on the trip in September of 2022. It was moving to see a second generation sharing stories and memories together. Paul and Todd said Jeff was always in their thoughts.

We also profiled a delightful 94-year-old Bismarck man named Johnny Nagel who, as a newly drafted soldier back in 1952, had plans to meet up with a hometown buddy, George Jangula, after he realized they were stationed just a mile apart in Korea. They made a date for a Saturday but George didn’t show up. He was killed on Friday. Johnny, together with his son, set out to honor George at the Korean Memorial.

We also spoke with Russ Stabler of Hunter, North Dakota. He didn’t bring a loved one on the trip, but said he came to the wall to remember his Vietnam brothers who couldn’t be there.

As Honor Flights inch closer to their 20th anniversary in 2025 and the travelers keep changing, the stories might too. On this Veterans Day, I hope you’ll take a half-hour to honor and remember these WWII, Korea, and Vietnam veterans who’ve taken the trips over the last few years and perhaps dream about what’s next for generations of veterans to come.

How to watch

“Bridging Generations — Honor Flight from WWII to Korea and Vietnam” will be televised at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 11, on WDAY Xtra. This will not be on WDAY-TV’s main channel.

Find WDAY Xtra on the following cable channels:

Midco in eastern North Dakota: Channel 596 Midco in western North Dakota: Channel 594 Sparklight: Channel 1096 For other cable providers, check local channel listings

DirecTV and Dish Network do not carry WDAY Xtra. Utilize another method to view the documentary.

Streaming:

The program will also be streamed online at InForum.com/WDAYPlus, or you can download the WDAY+ app on your cell phone or smart TV.

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2023 Veterans Honor Flight of ND/MN to take off again in April

Forum staff — Wed, 25 Jan 2023 17:43:07 GMT

FARGO — The Veterans Honor Flight of ND/MN has announced there will be a spring flight in April.

The Honor Flight will depart Hector International Airport on Sunday, April 30, and return Tuesday, May 2. The flight will have approximately 90 veterans on board from World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars.

The Veterans Honor Flight of ND/MN is a nonprofit, 100% volunteer organization that takes veterans to Washington, D.C., free of charge to visit the memorials built in their honor.

Any veteran from eastern North Dakota or northwest Minnesota who served before May 7, 1975, and would like to apply to go on a flight can go to https://veteranshonorflightofndmn.org to download an application.

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The first American killed in the Vietnam War was born in Minnesota and died watching a movie

Tracy Briggs — Wed, 16 Nov 2022 18:33:00 GMT

FARGO — Chester “Chet” Ovnand certainly had nothing to prove. In 1958 at the age of 44, he had retired from the U.S. Army after proudly serving in both World War II and Korea. He was living a comfortable life in Copperas Cove, Texas, when something called to him from Vietnam.

Before he was a Texas man, Chet was the Minnesota-born son of a Norwegian-born carpenter. Perhaps it was his Scandinavian sense of responsibility, but Ovnand had to be part of the fight. It would eventually lead to tragic consequences but also his place in history as the first American casualty of the Vietnam War.

While some middle-aged men decided Vietnam was a young man's battle, Ovnand opted to rejoin the army. He was assigned to an eight-man American Military Assistance Advisory Group sent to train South Vietnamese troops. He was stationed at a base camp in Bien Hoa, 20 miles northeast of Saigon, where trouble was brewing.

In a 1984 interview with People magazine, his wife Mildred said despite her husband voluntarily serving in Vietnam, he was still homesick and looking forward to coming home soon. With every letter he wrote to her, he would count down the days.

On July 8, 1959, with 115 days left in his deployment, Ovnand dropped a letter in the mess-hall mailbox. It would be his last.

According to a TIME magazine report from that night, after mailing the letter, Ovnand and five others sat down in the gray stucco mess hall to watch a movie — “The Tattered Dress" starring Jeanne Crain. They set up the home movie projector and settled in for a night that, perhaps, made them feel a little closer to home.

But they’d only make it to intermission.

“While they were absorbed in the first reel, six Communist terrorists (who obviously had cased the place well) crept out of the darkness and surrounded the mess hall. Two positioned a French MAT submachine gun in the rear window, two pushed gun muzzles through the pantry screen, the other two went to the front of the building to cover the Vietnamese guard. When Sgt. Ovnand snapped on the lights to change the first reel, the terrorists opened fire,” according to TIME.

When Sergeant Ovnand snapped on the lights to change the first reel, the terrorists opened fire.

Ovnand and Maj. Dale Buis of Imperial Beach, California, fell and died within minutes of each other and became the first U.S. soldiers to die in combat in Vietnam. (It's not clear who died first, so they are both credited as "the first.") Capt. Howard Boston of Blairsburg, Iowa, was seriously wounded, and two Vietnamese guards were killed. Within minutes Vietnamese troops arrived, but the rest of the assassins had already fled. Maj. Jack Hellet of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, escaped without injury. Two other officers in the unit were also safe, having chosen that night to play tennis on the base instead of watching the movie.

Who was Chester Ovnand?

While official military records of Ovnand list his home state as Texas, Ovnand began life in Minnesota. He was born to Engebret “Bert” and Mable Ovnand in Thief River Falls. When Chester was 6-years-old, in 1920, the family, which now included younger sister Furleigh, moved to Adams, North Dakota, where Bert worked as a carpenter.

Following his parents' divorce, Ovnand and his sister moved to Mankato, Minnesota, with their mother who, by 1930, had remarried. In 1937, Ovnand married Catherine Reynard. The couple would later divorce.

When WWII broke out, Ovnand was working in retail. He enlisted in Milwaukee in 1942. Following his service from 1942 to 1945, he later served in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953.

During his time in the service and after his death in Vietnam, Ovnand received several commendations and medals including the Purple Heart, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Campaign Medal, Vietnam Service Medal, Army Presidential Unit Citation, Vietnam Gallantry Cross and the Army Good Conduct Medal.

A street in Fort Hood, Texas, was also renamed Ovnand Boulevard.

All of it served as little consolation to his wife who learned about her husband’s death while sipping coffee and watching the "Today" show.

"I miss him every day," she told People magazine. "I just regret the whole damn war. I hated every minute of it."

Mildred died in 1987, just five years after her husband had the distinction of being just the second name, of 58,000 total, inscribed on the Vietnam Memorial Wall. Buis is the first because names are listed first according to chronological date of death and next alphabetically. However, Ovnand’s name is actually inscribed twice on the wall because it is misspelled on the first panel. Authorities remedied the mistake, by inscribing it on a later panel.

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Did you know the 1st Minnesotan killed in the Vietnam War was from both Moorhead and Grand Forks?

Tracy Briggs — Fri, 09 Sep 2022 15:00:00 GMT

Editor’s note: On Sunday, Sept. 11, for the first time in the history of the Veterans Honor Flight of ND/MN, the majority of the veterans going on the trip to Washington, D.C., are those who served during the Vietnam era. Forum reporter Tracy Briggs is flying with the group. Find her reports on Inforum Sept. 11-13. Over the next two days, to mark the flight’s transition to serving Vietnam veterans, The Forum is taking a closer look at the first soldiers from Minnesota and North Dakota killed in the war. Today, a story about a Minnesota Air Force captain who was Grand Forks to the core.

MOORHEAD

—

With a tilt of his head and a shy smile, Bob Larson looks back from the second row of the weathered old basketball team photo. Standing a foot shorter than others on the team, Larson was, by no means, the star of that 1950 Grand Forks Central High squad. However, years later, he’d stand out for another reason — a tragic one. He would become the first Minnesotan killed in the Vietnam war.

Larson was one of three U.S. Air Force officers killed when their Fairchild C-123 Provider became the first USAF plane to be lost in Vietnam. It happened on Feb. 2, 1962, during the earliest years of what would become one of America’s longest wars. Despite Larson’s story being dramatic and noteworthy, many were unaware of his ties to our region, which included carefree days on the basketball court in the northern Red River Valley.

Life on the court

Bob Falos was a year behind Larson at Grand Forks Central. He played on the "B" squad in 1950 while Larson suited up with the varsity squad. But even 72 years later, Falos remembers good old number 46.

“We weren't close friends or anything, but I definitely remember him, " Falos said, "I remember him being a nice, pretty easygoing guy,”

He doesn’t recall Larson getting a lot of playing time, but that didn’t stop him from putting in the work. “He was kind of ‘Y’ rat,” Falos said, referring to teenagers who spent their days and nights practicing at the YMCA.

However, Larson wouldn’t get to play ball again with his Central teammates. Right after his junior year in 1950, his family moved to Moorhead. Just the year before, his older brother Clarence had become president of Oak Grove Lutheran �� in Fargo. It was decided younger brother Bob would finish his education there. He and his mother, Anna, moved in with another brother, Elmer, an insurance agent who lived at 802 14th St. N. in Moorhead.

Larson seemed to embrace being the new kid at school, playing football, acting in the school play, working on the yearbook and picking up where he left off at Central, joining the Grover varsity basketball team. He was also part of the Edda Society which is similar to a speech club.

Larson seemed to do it all. And his adventures were about to get even bigger.

The Wild Blue Yonder

Following graduation from Oak Grove, Larson enlisted in the Air Force from Clay County, eventually working his way up to the rank of captain. He got married to a woman from Tennessee, and the couple had three children. By 1955, four years after Larson graduated from Oak Grove, America’s involvement in Vietnam escalated.

By early 1962, Captain Larson and his aircraft were assigned to Operation Ranch Hand, an effort to expose the roads and trails used by the Viet Cong, by dumping an estimated 19 million gallons of defoliating herbicides over 10% to 20% of Vietnam and parts of Laos.

The project started with Larson’s group in 1962 and carried on until 1971. The herbicide they most often used came to be known as Agent Orange — so named from the color of the containers it came in.

In later years, Agent Orange became highly controversial because of its long-term ecological impacts and the sometimes very serious impacts it had on the health of the soldiers who had been exposed to it.

Few details are known of the crash on Feb. 2, 1962. Larson's record on HonorStates.org says his death was recorded as: “Died through hostile action, air crash on land. Incident location: South Vietnam, Bien Hoa province.” For his service, Larson received several medals, including the Purple Heart.

Remembering Bob Larson

The bodies of Larson and his fellow officers were recovered. He was buried in North Carolina. According to a 1973 story from The Forum, his young family, including an infant son he had never met, resettled in California.

The fact that a man who was so tied to the Grand Forks and the Fargo-Moorhead region was the very first of the 1,070 Minnesotans killed in the Vietnam war doesn't appear to be common knowledge here. Everyone we spoke to, from former teammates to school officials, was surprised at the sad news.

We only discovered the fact after stumbling upon an old newspaper clipping in The Forum archives. But now that Larson's loss is known, maybe those who now walk the same high school hallways at Grand Forks Central or Oak Grove Lutheran or walk the streets of north Moorhead where he once lived, might give a thought to the nice, easygoing kid who loved basketball and sacrificed all.

Tomorrow, a closer look at the first North Dakotan to die in the Vietnam war including a nearly 50-year-old visit with his grieving parents.

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