MIDDLETOWN – Hudson Valley Honor Flight held a special red carpet event for the premiere of “Hudson Valley Honor Flight – Generation Bridge,” a documentary by Joe Allen chronicling the sixth Honor Flight to Washington, DC for World War II veterans. The flights originate from Stewart Airport at Newburgh.
Some 700 attended the premiere at the Paramount Theater
in Middletown Saturday evening
Grace Damiani, a WWII nurse, is wheeled by Cornelius Denehy,
a WWII vet who served in Europe
Honor Flight co-founder Brian Maher said they were very pleased with the way Joe Allen brought the essence of the experience to the screen.
“Every single ounce of what Honor Flight is you can see in that movie,” said Maher. “The emotion, the passion, the tears, the stories that bring people together who would have never been brought together had it not been for their Honor Flight experience; he epitomizes everything it means into this movie and it was just so special being a part of it and seeing it on the big screen.”
Allen said they set out to make an emotional film and he believes that they succeeded in that respect.
“I wanted to show these guys and all their emotional feelings about this,” said Allen. “These guys, a lot of them don’t talk about it, or, haven’t spoken about the war in many years and now are suddenly near the end of their lives rediscovering their emotions about it. So, I wanted to make sure that I captured that.”
Allen financed the movie himself and did it with only about a third of the anticipated $90,000 budget. He said with the help of some “angels” they were able to complete the film. Allen announced he is giving the rights of the movie to HVHF for free.
National statistics show that there are less than one million WWII veterans alive and they die at a rate of 500 per day. There are only about 11,000 WWII veterans in the Hudson Valley.
Honor Flight has brought over 500 of these veterans on visits to Washington, DC, but Maher said they’re not sure how many more exclusively WWII veteran Honor Flights there will be, making the film documented history of the last exclusively WWII veteran Honor Flight in Hudson Valley. He said on the next flight coming up this spring, they will be transitioning to include Korean War vets.
