President Obama honors Richard Overton, oldest living World War II vet, and Honor Flight program
In honor of Veteran’s Day President Obama praised Richard Overton, the oldest living World War II Veteran, and the Honor Flight Program. The latter is noteworthy considering it was shut down during fiscal negotiations a month ago.
President Barack Obama greets Richard Overton, with Earlene Love-Karo, in the Blue Room of the White House, Nov. 11, 2013. Mr. Overton,107 years old and the oldest living World War II veteran, attended the Veteran’s Day Breakfast at the White House. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)
“This is the life of one American veteran living proud and strong in the land he helped keep free. Earlier this year, the folks at Honor Flight Austin brought Richard to Washington, D.C., for the first time and he and his fellow veterans paid their respects at the World War II Memorial,” Obama said during a Veterans Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery.
“Then they visited the memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. and as Richard sat in a wheelchair beneath that great marble statute, he wept, and the crowd that gathered around him wept too to see one of the oldest living veterans of World War II bear witness to a day, to the progress of a nation he thought might never come. Richard Overton, this American veteran, is 107 years old,” Obama continued. “We are honored that he is here with us today.”
Overton was not part of the group which visited a month ago, but rather came to Washington DC in May.
The open-air monuments were part of controversy as veterans “stormed” these memorials, including the National Mall which had been shut down.
The President continued to heap praise on Overton and not on the controversy.
“He was there at Pearl Harbor when the battleships were still smoldering,” Obama said. “He was there at Okinawa. He was there at Iwo Jima, where he said ‘I only got out of there by the grace of God.’”
“When the war ended, Richard headed home to Texas to a nation bitterly divided by race, and his service on the battlefield was not always matched by the respect that he deserved at home. But this veteran held his head high,” Obama continued. “He carried on and lived his life with dignity and built his wife a house with his own two hands. He went back to work in the furniture business. In time, he served as a courier in the Texas state Capitol where he worked for four governors and made more friends than most of us do in a lifetime. And today Richard still lives in the house that he built all those years ago, rakes his own lawn, and every Sunday, he hops in his 1971 Ford truck and drives one of the nice ladies in his neighborhood to church.”
What a lying, deceitful man Obama is. The same honor flights that he closed to make them feel the pain of a gov’t shut-down. I doubt Barry Hussein would have taken this approach had Overton been white.