Retired Marine Richard Damronshows a photo captured while he spoke to a group of middle school students during a 2012 Honor Flight sponsored by South Carolina’s electric cooperatives.
Photo by Josh P. Crotzer
This month marks the 10th anniversary of one of my best days as part of the electric cooperative movement.
On April 11, 2012, South Carolina’s electric cooperatives sponsored an Honor Flight where 100 veterans of World War II flew to Washington, D.C., to visit the monuments erected in their honor. Co-op representatives, including me, were among the contingent that went along as guardians. It was powerful and moving for all of us to witness these heroes being celebrated. For many of those veterans, it was a last opportunity to receive such a level of deserved appreciation.
Most of them have passed on since that day, but we have found several who are still with us. One of them is Richard Damron.
If you’ve been a faithful reader of this column for the past decade, you may remember that Mr. Damron made an impression on me at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. That day, he told a group of middle school students from Utah, at the prompting of their teacher, about his experience on Iwo Jima as his 3rd Marine Division helped secure the island for the Allies.
“I just remember telling them that this is a wonderful country,” Damron recounted in February. “We did it for them, and it is in their hands what happens in the future.”
Now 96, Damron’s recollections of that day in Washington, as well as the battle in the Pacific, remain sharp and profound. He says his brigade landed about five days after the American flag was mounted atop Mount Suribachi. He remembers the black, volcanic sand was so fine it would fall back into the holes American troops were digging. He remembers the carnage and its stench from one of the war’s deadliest battles, something he says no 19-year-old should have to witness.
But he also remembers being restored by the vision of his country’s flag waving above them.
“You could get up out of your foxhole and look up on Mount Suribachi,” he says. “Normally, there was enough of a breeze that it was unfurled. Such a beautiful piece of red, white and blue cloth. It made me feel love for America.”
After finishing his tour in Guam and China, Damron was discharged in 1946 and returned home to marry his first love, Jerrie. The two will soon celebrate 76 years of marriage.
He returned to military service, this time as a radar operator in the Air Force from which he retired in 1966.
By 2012, he and Jerrie had moved to York to be near their children. He had always wanted to go to Arlington, Virginia, and visit the Marine Corps Memorial, which depicts the iconic flag raising on Mount Suribachi. Once he heard about the Honor Flight through his cooperative, York Electric, he didn’t hesitate to apply.
Ten years later, it’s still a memory he holds dear.
“It was a wonderful, wonderful trip,” he says. “The honor of associating with 100 people who did the same thing, had the same feeling that I had—you just can’t take that away.”