A decorated U.S. Marine is the first Gilroy man to take part in a nationwide program that honors aging veterans of the country’s foreign wars – while they still are among us.
Richard ‘Dick’ Gomer, 86, boarded a plane in San Francisco yesterday, April 16, with 24 other veterans of World War II, the Korean War and other conflicts, all made possible by donations to Honor Flight and its year-old San Jose chapter, Honor Flight Bay Area.
The national organization founded nearly a dozen years ago in Ohio has grown to 137 “hubs,” or chapters in 43 states.
The nonprofit group offers free round trip flights at no cost to the nation’s capitol for aging vets. They are accompanied by “guardians,” volunteers who pay their own way and take care of the vet’s needs during the trip and tours of Washington D.C.’s hallowed war memorials and Arlington National Cemetery. For many of the veterans, it has and will be their first sight of monuments and memorials that honor them and their sacrifices.
Honor Flight calls the veterans it helps, “America’s heroes” and asks that American join in honoring them with flights to the nation’s capitol “…before they are no longer with us.”
Of the 20,000 veterans estimated to live in the Bay Area hub’s region, 75 percent are expected to pass away in the next six years, according the Honor Flight Bay Area.
Gomer, who is retired from the seed business, joins the ranks of more than 117,550 veterans and more than 70,000 guardians who have made the trips since the first flight of 136 veterans in 2005, according to Honor Flights.
Jim Oates, a neighbor of Gomer’s, U.S. Army veteran and a member of the board of the San Jose hub, said this week’s flight was the second since the hub’s formation last year. It cost about $2,000 to send each veteran on an Honor Flight, he said.
Interest among the targeted veterans in the hub’s seven county Bay Area region has been so great that two more flights are panned in 2015, Oates said.
Gomer is the first veteran from Gilroy to make one of the organization’s regular flights, he said.
A native of Frederick, Colorado, Gomer belongs to the Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion chapters in Gilroy. He joined the Marines right out of high school in 1946.
As a 21-year-old infantry sergeant and squad leader with the 7th Marine Regiment of the 1st Marine Division, he was ordered in 1950 with the rest of H Company, 3rd Battalion to march north through the Korean mountains during a fierce winter and make contact with the waiting enemy.
“We were attacking a combined North Korean and Chinese offense and it was a job just to drive as far north as we could till we made contact,” he said.
It was on a frozen ridgeline that Gomer’s squad ran into enemy machine gun bunkers spewing lethal lead at the advancing Marines.
He was hit, and pulled back by other Marines from the front to an aid station in the rear to await evacuation helicopters.
Because of the weather, the helicopters were grounded—and the enemy took advantage to hit the aid station.
“While we were waiting, we got incoming mortar fire,” Gomer said, seated on his backyard porch set in verdant, sun-splashed yard in rural Gilroy.
Already suffering from machine gun wounds, he was raked with shrapnel from an exploding mortar shell and took slugs of hot metal in the chest, arm and shoulder.
“Then the helicopters came in and took me off the mountain to an aid station,” he said.
From there, the kid who’d joined the Marines at 17, a year after World War II ended, was flown to Japan where he would spend the next three months in a military hospital recuperating from the wounds that earned him the Purple Heart.
Then it was back to his unit—and more combat before his two years in Korea ended and he returned home.
A few days before leaving for Washington D.C., Gomer said his greatest satisfaction from participation in Honor Flight is what it might do for others.
“It’s a great program. I can represent other veterans who don’t have the opportunity to go. If I can help others, that would be a plus for me,” he said.
For information on applying to travel with Honor Flights as a veteran or guardian, or to make donations, visit www.honorflightBayArea.org, or call (408) 925-1999.
