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West Michigan WWII veterans fly again at Dream Flights event

Posted at 10:25 PM, Aug 06, 2021
and last updated 2021-08-06 22:25:25-04

SPARTA, Mich. — A group of West Michigan World War II veterans got the chance to fly again at a Dream Flights event on Friday.

Dream Flights paired up with Holland Home Independent Living to make the event possible.

Nine residents at the facility got to ride in a Boeing Stearman biplane, which is the same aircraft that many veterans trained in before heading into combat.

Army Air Corps Veteran Gelmer Romeyn says he was eager to get back in the pilot's seat.

"I could take off easy, easy enough," says Romeyn. "I might have a bumpy landing. But you see, to preclude that they thought ahead of time; they took the control stick out, so I couldn't do it."

Dream Flights tells us they hadn't seen so many vets from a senior living community take part in the event.

Multiple branches of the military were represented at Friday's event, from the Army, to the Navy, to the Air Force and Coast Guard.

The youngest veteran at the Dream Flights event was 95 years old—the oldest was 98.

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