Veterans, assemble! ‘Wings Over Wendy’ team signs off Zoom and meets in person
Veterans of all ages, all branches,
any town are welcome to join the Wings Over Wendy's meetings in-person and
online
PUBLISHED: July
2, 2021 at 3:10 p.m. | UPDATED: July 2, 2021 at 3:14 p.m.
Wings Over Wendy’s veterans group goodbye photo at the Wendy’s restaurant on Platt Avenue in West Hills. The group then met in a Wendy’s in Woodland Hills before they outgrew that location. They still meet on Mondays, on Zoom and in-person, at a location on Shoup Avenue in West Hills. (Courtesy)
You can’t replace a handshake and a hug. If we learned anything about
independence this past year, we learned that.
A little over a month ago, on Memorial Day, 60 older veterans who self
quarantined in their Valley homes and apartments for over a year finally got to
see each other in the flesh again.
It was like old home week, said Ed Reynolds, a retired Air Force
lieutenant colonel, who had set up weekly Zoom meetings for some of them to
stay in touch. Ed’s a tech savvy guy, but trying to teach the typewriter
generation how to Zoom on a computer they can barely operate was a challenge,
but most of them learned.
Now, they were back in the same room, shaking hands, hugging and back
slapping each other – carrying on like it was one, big, family reunion, which
it was.
“So many characters with so many stories to tell,” is the way Ed put it.
Many of the vets had been meeting for more than 15 years every Monday
morning at a Wendy’s in West Hills for a cup of coffee and a few hours of
camaraderie.
They remember the group’s co-founder Fred “Crash” Blechman, a Navy
Corsair pilot, who earned his nickname for crashing four of our fighter planes
while never shooting down one on the other side.
They remember Ed “Bomber” Koscinski, who walked in one day and asked if
he could join. When Poland was captured, he was forced to become a German MIG
pilot. He spent the war trying to shoot these guys down. Didn’t matter, he was
a veteran. C’mon in.
“I would sit out in my car in the parking lot watching the guys arrive,”
the late Art Sherman, a B-24 Bombardier in World War II and former leader of
the group, told me. “They’d get their walkers out of the trunk and slowly make
their way across the parking lot. You could tell they were in pain.
“By the time they got to the door, though, they were already smiling.
They knew what was waiting inside for them.”
Camaraderie, and the thing they needed most growing old, laughter. Many
of these vets were widowers with sons and daughters who begged their lonely
fathers to get out of the house and join the group. Don’t give up.
Others had wives who couldn’t stand to see their once vibrant husbands
just sit in front of a TV set from morning to night. They twisted their arms to
go to one of the meetings, just to see how they’d like it. They loved it. So
did their wives. They dropped their husbands off and went shopping for a few
hours.
From half a dozen World War II flyboys meeting for the first time over
lunch in 2002, the group had grown to more than 100, encompassing every branch
of service, and the spouses and children of its members, if they wanted to come
to the meetings.
Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Ed Reynolds File photo
It’s a wonderful story, but the truth is, they’re only scratching the
surface. There are thousands more older veterans sitting in their homes in the
Valley today fighting the same enemy and losing – giving in to the loneliness
and depression.
If you have a retired neighbor living alone or know someone who was in the service, and might be battling their own demons, let them know
there’s a
big, family reunion of veterans meeting every Monday morning and they’re
welcome to join in.
They’ll be plenty of handshakes and hugs, and don’t worry about feeling
out of place, because you won’t be. That special bond veterans have of taking
care of each other has no expiration date on it.
On Monday, a 45-minute film on the history of the Fourth of July will be
shown. There’s a meet and greet from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m. then the meeting and
film begins.
The group outgrew its space at Wendy’s, and now meets in a former
synagogue located on the El Camino High north campus, 7401 Shoup Ave. in West
Hills. Parking is available in the school lot on Variel Avenue.
For more information, give Ed Reynolds a call at 818-884-4013.
Dennis
McCarthy’s column runs on Sunday. He can be reached at dmccarthynews@gmail.com.
