Each year, the Honor Flight Northern Colorado (HFNC), a non-profit organization, is dedicated to sending our Northern Colorado veterans to Washington, D.C. to celebrate their past military service. Veterans are greeted with a dinner celebration in Baltimore hosted by the national Honor Flight Network. The veterans visit the military memorials in Washington, D.C. on the 2nd day before heading home. Overall, the Honor Flight Network has sent over 100,000 veterans since the two day program started in 2005.
This year, Loveland resident and WWII veteran Boyd Johnson and his son, Jon have been selected for the Honor Flight and will be attending the event in September celebrating Boyd’s and other veterans service to our country.
Boyd began his military service in 1944 joining the U.S. Navy at age 17 as an electronics technician. He served on the USS Smalley, a destroyer in the Pacific. His job was to jam and disrupt radio signals sent by the Japanese, which prevented kamikaze pilots from targeting U.S. Navy warships. Boyd kept a military diary, which proved useful in writing his memoirs of his military service. Boyd is a genealogist and has written many family books on his ancestors and family members as a tribute to them. He and his wife are members of the Larimer County Genealogical Society.
After his military service, he married Gwen in 1946. Gwen would write Boyd daily to boost his morale during the war. The best day in his wartime diary mentioned the end of the war when the Japanese surrendered in 1945. Congratulations to Boyd and the other veterans selected for this and past Honor Flights. Donations are gladly accepted to help this beneficial program. More information on the Honor Flight Northern Colorado program is available at www.honorflightnortherncolorado.org/.