Paul_Sengupta wrote:I remember volunteering and then waiting with my fingers crossed that I could be found someone to fly.
Replying to myself here, I'd just like to add something to this. Back in the day there were more pilots volunteering than there were veterans to be found. It's a tribute to Graham that despite a number of prior attendees who are no longer with us and a number who are too ill or too frail to now join us, that numbers of attendees have risen, and each year there seem to be a number of first timers.
Since Graham as taken the reins and taken it upon himself to seek out as many veterans as he can, we now have the situation where the number of pilot volunteers is now just barely enough. This is astonishing given the advanced age of these people.
I don't know how other veterans enjoy the day, but each and every one I've spoken to about it have said how marvelous it is that we're still thinking of them. Indeed, one of my first timers said to me, after a trip, that it was all so long ago, with so much water under the bridge, with life changing so much, that he thought our generation had forgotten all about them.
He was quite emotional that we still wanted to meet these people and bring them together and to share memories with our generation. It was nice to hear this as sometimes I think we volunteer for these things out of our own thoughts of wanting to meet these people and hear their stories...it's so nice to hear that they relish telling these stories as much as we like hearing them.
Even the chap I flew last year...a first timer...we only went from Lee on Solent to Sandown due to the weather further north...but we sat outside the cafe there and had a good old natter about aviation...pilot to pilot. You could see how after many years away, he was still a pilot. Aviation is in one's blood. It never leaves you. In the same vein, another prior passenger of mine wanted to sit and talk to us forumites rather than talk with the other veterans. Were were talking about aviation and aeroplanes, and he was still as keen as he was back in the 1940s and for those hours, we were all just a group of pilots chatting. Age and experience didn't matter.
I'm going off on a tangent again, but the purpose of this post was to congratulate Graham not just in his organisational skills in seeking out pilots and matching up pilots and passengers, but also for his incredible job in seeking out "new" (as he was heard to say!) veterans. You can't put a price on hearing a veteran say, "It's incredible that you do this for us. We thought we'd been forgotten about. We now know that's not the case."