Honor Flight Long Island takes 47 vets to Washington

The veterans organization Honor Flight Long Island is planning to return to regularly scheduled semi-annual flights to Washington, D.C., after two years of pandemic-related restrictions. A flight on April 29 will take 47 veterans of the U.S. armed forces — among them Jeffrey Green, a 77-year-old Vietnam veteran from Baldwin — to visit the military memorials in the nation’s capital, meet with service branch representatives, make new friends and no doubt exchange stories of life-changing experiences in the military.

The vets will take a free early-morning flight on Southwest Airlines from MacArthur Airport in Islip. Veterans and their guardians will visit the World War II, Iwo Jima, Korean War, Vietnam War and Air Force memorials in Washington as well as Arlington National Cemetery, where they will see a changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. They will return that night, and will be welcomed by the Nassau County Firefighters Pipes and Drums.

The participants will include two World War II veterans, seven veterans of the Korean War and 38 Vietnam War veterans.

“What this flight really represents is a big hug to all our veterans from Honor Flight, their families and supporters, who make such flights possible,” said Bill Jones, president of HFLI, which is run by volunteers. Jones graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1972, and is an Army veteran.

Green served as a Marine Corps sergeant in Vietnam. A member of Baldwin’s American Legion Post 246, he was born in Brooklyn, the youngest of three brothers, and joined the military at age 17. He said he had his fair share of memorable moments overseas. He was a helicopter door machine gunner, and recalled being shot down in North Vietnam. He also recounted a dramatic incident on the ground, when he faced a barrage of rockets.

“We got hit with 140mm rockets from seven miles out, and I got thrown about 50 feet,” Green said. He suffered a traumatic brain injury, and also battles post-traumatic stress disorder.

He remembered his difficult return home, in 1967, after his experience in Vietnam. “When I came home, I was kind of messed up,” he said. “I came home and I didn’t fit into society. I drank quite a bit. I slept on the floor for over a year.”

Green and his wife, Helene, met in 1970, and they have been married since 1972 and have three sons. After his service, Green went back to school to become a teacher, graduating with honors from New York City Community College, now New York City College of Technology, in 1970, and finishing his degree at Brooklyn College, where he graduated magna cum laude.

He began teaching phys. ed. at Pershing Jr. High School, and eventually rose through the ranks to become an assistant principal, an assistant to the superintendent, superintendent of summer school and principal.

Green moved to Baldwin from Brooklyn in 1978, and after retiring from the New York City school system in 2003, he  join the Baldwin School District where he hired teachers to teach students in cooking, arts and crafts, and ceramics programs at Baldwin Middle School.

While his experience in the war and after he returned was difficult, Green said, he is happy that veterans are respected today. “When we first came back, it was sad because nobody respected us,” he said. “People are very nice today. They’ll always come over and thank me for my service.”

Green went back to visit Vietnam in 2019 with the Greatest Generation Foundation and Harold G. Moore and Joseph Galloway, the Army veterans who wrote the book “We Were Soldiers Once ... And Young” detailing their time in war.

Green said he was looking forward to the trip to Washington and getting the chance to catch up with fellow veterans. “It’s always nice to get together with other veterans and have a lot to talk about,” he said.

“There’s always camaraderie between people. Especially when it’s your own service. When I meet other Marines, we have even more to talk about.”