Company, foundation sponsor Honor Flight book to benefit veterans

Stars and Stripes Honor Flight (SSHF) soon will release a coffee table book that captures the emotion and events of the Honor Flight experience. Proceeds from the book benefit Honor Flight and Fisher House Wisconsin.

Through breathtaking photographs, “Honor Flight: A Visual Journey” celebrates WWII veterans as they travel on a Stars and Stripes Honor Flight to Washington, D.C., to see their memorial. SSHF curated five years of photographs from 18 Honor Flights to find the most moving images that tell the Honor Flight story through the eyes of the nation’s aging heroes.

Proceeds from the book will be shared evenly between Stars and Stripes Honor Flight and Fisher House Wisconsin. SSHF will use the proceeds to fund future Honor Flights out of Milwaukee. Fisher House will break ground at the Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center in early 2014 to build a "home away from home" for veterans so their family members can be close to them during hospitalization for illness, disease or injury.

Our parent company, Wisconsin Energy Corporation, has partnered with Stars and Stripes Honor Flight since its inception, helping sponsor flights, as well as the Field of Honor event in August 2012 at Miller Park. We Energies and the Wisconsin Energy Foundation helped underwrite the book. 

“Honor Flight is all about saying ‘thank you.’ But sometimes thank you is not enough,” says Joe Dean, founder of Stars and Stripes Honor Flight. “What we realized during the process of the Honor Flight experience, is that we shouldn't wait 70 years to show our veterans how much we appreciate them. We have young servicemen and women returning from their tours of duty hurt and in need of healing. Fisher House helps our wounded warriors heal with their families close at hand. We want to help make that happen here in southeast Wisconsin. We believe a family's love is good medicine.”

“Honor Flight: A Visual Journey” sells for $100. Visit HonorFlightBook.com or call Stars and Stripes Honor Flight at 262-238-7741 to pre-order the book. The book will be available at any of Steinhafel's 16 locations, Visual Image Photography and other retail outlets beginning Veteran's Day, Nov. 11, 2013.

Stars and Stripes Honor Flight will have two more flights this year, on Sept. 21 and Nov. 2. The November flight will feature two planes, one of which will be exclusively for Korean War veterans. Nearly 2,700 veterans have taken a Stars and Stripes Honor Flight since its inception in the fall of 2008.