{"id":799709,"date":"2019-09-23T17:39:40","date_gmt":"2019-09-23T23:39:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/?p=371966"},"modified":"2019-09-24T08:21:51","modified_gmt":"2019-09-24T14:21:51","slug":"summit-county-vietnam-veteran-reflects-on-honor-flight-trip-to-washington-d-c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/summit-county-vietnam-veteran-reflects-on-honor-flight-trip-to-washington-d-c\/","title":{"rendered":"Summit County Vietnam veteran reflects on Honor Flight trip to Washington, D.C."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

<\/p>

Breckenridge local Dave Patterson received a trip to Washington, D.C., as part of the High Plains Honor Flight program, which provides free trips to the nation’s capital for veterans to view memorials.<\/strong>
Sawyer D\u2019Argonne \/ sdargonne@summitdaily.com<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

FRISCO \u2014 A Summit County resident was treated to the experience of the lifetime earlier this month as part of the High Plains Honor Flight, receiving free trip to Washington, D.C., in honor of his service during the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was such an eye opening experience,\u201d said Dave Patterson, who served in Vietnam for about a year in 1970. \u201cAnd we received such a nice welcome. It was awakening for a lot of us veterans, especially Vietnam vets, that never got recognized for our service.\u201d<\/p>\n

Patterson was born in Fairplay and said he grew up nearby in Loveland. He moved to Breckenridge about 47 years ago hoping to ski for a year but, like many others, fell for the area and decided to stick around.<\/p>\n

Before he made his move to Summit, Patterson said he felt a draw to join his countrymen fighting overseas in Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was going to school in Gunnison at Western State College, and a buddy of mine there got killed in Vietnam,\u201d Patterson said. \u201cAnd it was like, \u2018Let\u2019s go have a cup of coffee.\u2019 Everybody just ignored it. It kept bugging me that somebody would die, and that nobody really cared.\u201d<\/p>\n

Patterson enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1969 and joined the 101st Airborne Division \u2014 the \u201cScreaming Eagles\u201d \u2014 as part of a reinforcement group following the division\u2019s bloody 10-day battle at Hamburger Hill in May 1969. Patterson spent about a year in Vietnam, lugging an M60 machine gun through densely forested mountain ridges in the A S\u00e2u Valley along the eastern border of Laos.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt first, I was very much pro-America helping out over there,\u201d Patterson said. \u201cBut by the second half of the year, I just wanted to stay alive so I could go home. \u2026 It wasn\u2019t really about killing the enemy. It was that somebody was trying to kill you. The objective wasn\u2019t fighting for God or country. It was just to stay alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Patterson returned home from the conflict alive and physically unharmed, he said he was welcomed back with jeers and never had the opportunity to embrace his service experience in a positive way.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of us that came back didn\u2019t want to admit we were veterans,\u201d said Patterson, noting the anti-war sentiment that began to sweep its way across the country in the mid 1960s. \u201cI was spit on at the airport and called a baby killer. A lot of us didn\u2019t talk about it because it just wasn\u2019t popular to be a veteran. They weren\u2019t giving out any \u2018attaboys.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

But earlier this month, Patterson\u2019s service was recognized in a way it never had been. On Sept. 15, a group of about 150 veterans who had served in World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam and even more recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan were taken on a free trip to Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

The program, called the High Plains Honor Flight, is part of a greater nationwide Honor Flight Network dedicated to allowing veterans from across the country to visit the capital and see the memorials built to the wars they served in. The tours are funded through donations, and the organization offers tours from 140 regional hubs, including three in Colorado.<\/p>\n

According to Patterson, the event is quite a spectacle. Patterson said the group was picked up in four busses from the Loveland area and taken to Denver for the flight. The veterans received star treatment on the way down.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were three helicopters, four police cars and probably over 100 motorcycles \u2014 half in front of us and half in back,\u201d Patterson said. \u201cEverywhere we went, we had an escort. There were also thousands of people lining the streets on our way down waving flags. Every overpass had a fire truck with a huge American flag hanging from it. It was a really heart warming thing for a lot of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once they touched down in Washington, the group was treated to a dinner and banquet, which Patterson said featured some highly emotional speeches and stories from veterans. The next day, the group was taken on a tour around the capital to see the nation\u2019s war memorials.<\/p>\n

When it was time to return, Patterson said a crowd again was waiting in Denver to receive them \u2014 a stark contrast from his experience returning from the war, trading in ridicule and mockery for a reverent group of current military personnel and a band to trumpet their return.<\/p>\n

For Patterson, the experience was uplifting, and he encouraged other veterans in the area to look into the opportunity.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a real healing process for some of us,\u201d Patterson said. \u201cThe major thing was that it was the first time we\u2019d ever had any true welcoming home. It was a great feeling to see all those people come out.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve donated money to the Vietnam (Veterans Memorial) for years. I stopped doing that after this flight. My donations are now going to this. I thought it was that much more important.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more information, or to donate to the High Plains Honor Flight, visit HighPlainsHonorFlight.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Breckenridge local Dave Patterson received a trip to Washington, D.C., as part of the High Plains Honor Flight program, which provides free trips to the nation’s capital for veterans to view memorials.Sawyer D\u2019Argonne \/ sdargonne@summitdaily.com FRISCO \u2014 A Summit County resident was treated to the experience of the lifetime earlier this month as part of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-799709","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-24 11:57:13","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=799709"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":799722,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799709\/revisions\/799722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}