{"id":38305,"date":"2013-11-06T11:35:55","date_gmt":"2013-11-06T15:35:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=38305"},"modified":"2013-11-06T11:39:03","modified_gmt":"2013-11-06T15:39:03","slug":"marines-feted-at-ohare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=38305","title":{"rendered":"Marines f\u00eated at O’Hare"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Washington Times<\/a> reports that 13 marines returning from Afghanistan got an unexpected welcome at O’Hare airport in Chicago. When they landed, the local fire department greeted the aircraft with an arch of water. inside the airport they were welcomed by fire fighters and police who joined the USO folks. Then they all had their seats upgraded on their final leg of the journey to San Diego thanks to some folks who gave up their own first class tickets;<\/p>\n

American Airlines then upgraded six of the Marines\u2019 tickets on a San Diego-bound flight to first class \u2014 the last of the available seating in that section, AP reported. Seven other first-class ticket holders immediately gave up their seats, though, and traded down so the Marines could all sit together.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From Fox News<\/a>, the backstory on the welcome;<\/p>\n

The welcome home started with a phone call. Stephanie Hare, a native of Illinois who now works in England, called the USO at O’Hare and explained that her fiance, Rajan, who had served seven months in Afghanistan, was with a dozen other Marines on a plane bound for Chicago from Baltimore.<\/p>\n

“I just thought if they could get them some Chicago pizza, champagne or something, that would mean a lot,” she said.<\/p>\n

On the other end of the line was John Colas, a 74-year-old former Marine USO volunteer. He told Hare he’d try to do something in the hour or so before the flight landed. But he cautioned that while volunteers make an effort to welcome military personnel whenever they come through the airport, he wasn’t sure he could pull anything off in such a short time.<\/p>\n

Colas got on the phone with the police and fire departments, the airlines and anyone else he could think of.<\/p>\n

“There must have been 15 Chicago firemen and an equal number of Chicago police and they formed a corridor for the Marines when they got off the airplane,” he said.<\/p>\n

Rajan said the Marines didn’t know what to make of it, starting with the slightly unnerving experience of looking out a plane window to see a fire truck.<\/p>\n

“For a second, we were like, ‘Are we in trouble?'” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s always a Vietnam-era veteran behind these things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Washington Times reports that 13 marines returning from Afghanistan got an unexpected welcome at O’Hare … Marines f\u00eated at O’Hare<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-support-the-troops"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38305\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}