Clinton veteran Ed Gouge lays wreath at Tomb of the Unknown Soldier during honor flight

Ed Gouge almost turned down the invitation.

When a fellow member of First Baptist Church of Clinton asked whether he would like to spend a day in Washington, D.C., as part of an honor flight for veterans, his first instinct was to pass. His wife, Diane, thought otherwise.

“I told her I wasn’t sure I wanted to do this,” Gouge said. “My better three-quarters talked me into it. She’s the best counselor a man could ever have.”

On Sept. 16, Gouge boarded a plane at Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport with 90 other veterans, spent the day visiting the memorials built in their honor and came home that night to a crowd of hundreds waving flags at the top of the escalators.

The invitation came from Ashley and Kathy Asbill, who attend church with the Gouges. The Asbills are part of a family foundation, Indigo Hope, that was supporting the honor flight. When Kathy Asbill asked whether Gouge knew other Upstate veterans who might want to go, he offered two names. One was his second cousin, Ray Yarborough of Rock Hill, who served in Vietnam at the same time Gouge did and who accepted.

Ashley Asbill served as Gouge’s guardian for the day, and Kathy Asbill served as Yarborough’s. The four of them stayed together from start to finish.

The day started before dawn, with the veterans gathered at the airport by 4 a.m. for goody bags, shirts and breakfast at the gate. The breakfast bags had been decorated by children at the First Baptist Clinton preschool. Of the 91 who flew, most served in Vietnam. Two were World War II veterans.

The itinerary moved quickly: the World War II Memorial first, then Arlington National Cemetery, then the National Mall, where the group posed for a photograph on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial before walking to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. They also visited the Vietnam Women’s Memorial and the Korean War Veterans Memorial. The Marine Corps War Memorial at Iwo Jima was closed for cleaning.

It was at Arlington National Cemetery that the day turned for Gouge.

Chosen to lay the wreath

The group arrived shortly before noon, in time for the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. One of the organizers, Michelle Albrecht, worked her way through the veterans and selected three men, one from World War II, one from Korea and one from Vietnam, to lay a wreath on behalf of the honor flight. She picked Gouge.

“I didn’t hesitate. I told her that would be fine,” he recalled. “But I don’t know why she chose me.”

All three men were in wheelchairs, pushed by their guardians. A sergeant came out ahead of time and walked them through exactly what would happen. After the changing of the guard, the crowd began to murmur, thinking the wreath had been forgotten. Then the sergeant reappeared and motioned for the three men to follow.

Asked how it felt, Gouge answered with one word: humble.

“There is no church service I have ever attended that makes you feel as reverent and as close to God as that place,” he said. “It was the only place that day where I teared up.”

Gouge spent eight months in Vietnam as a casualty officer with the 101st Airborne Division, processing the paperwork, personal effects and family correspondence for every soldier the division lost. He cannot recall a single name from those files. Before the trip, he researched the records of McDowell County, North Carolina, where he was born, and looked up the men from his home county who died in Vietnam within two years of his own age. He found eight names, none ofwhom he had known.

At the wall, he and the Asbills located about half of them. Panel numbers were easy. Line numbers were harder, at least until they worked out that the lines on the large center panels can be counted off in tens. By then the group was running short on time.

Mail call

The flight home was quieter than the flight up and then came a surprise the veterans had been told about but not explained: mail call.

Albrecht called the names, and every veteran received a bag. Gouge’s is still sitting in his kitchen. Inside were thank-you cards along with letters from strangers thanking him for his service. In Laurens County, students at Eastside Elementary School, M.S. Bailey School and the First Baptist Clinton preschool all made cards for the veterans.

“What surprised me was the organization it took to get those little children together to write those cards,” he said. “And they’re beautiful. I can imagine those teachers trying to explain to them what a veteran is and why we honor them.”

A sea of people

The landing at GSP brought the day’s second humbling.

Veterans in wheelchairs came off the plane last and had to take the elevator rather than the escalator. Ashley Asbill rolled Gouge to the top of the stairs between the two escalators, and he looked down at a sea of people cheering and waving flags. They held him there for a moment. The cheering did not stop.

When the elevator doors opened on the lower level, the crowd was waiting with salutes and outstretched hands. There was a band. There were high school JROTC units, members of American Legion Post 25 from Laurens and the command staff of the Greenville Police Department in uniform. One teacher had offered her students extra credit to attend, which brought their parents, too.

Gouge estimates the crowd at close to a thousand. His cousin put it about the same. Somewhere in it was Diane, who has been married to him for 56 years this week.

“I was trying to take it all in,” he said. “And then I saw Diane.”

Coming in Part Two: the road that took a first-generation college student from a small town in the North Carolina mountains to Vietnam, and then to Clinton for the next 50 years.

Enjoy the photo gallery including highlights from the Honor Flight Day.