Suffolk County sends 46 veterans to Washington memorials on Honor Flight
Forty-six Suffolk County veterans visited Washington memorials on an Honor Flight, a trip that put the county’s largest veteran community at the center of a day of remembrance.
Forty-six Suffolk County veterans traveled to Washington, D.C., to visit the World War II Memorial, the Korean War Veterans Memorial and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on an Honor Flight Long Island trip built around remembrance and recognition.
The flight carried extra weight in Suffolk, which county and state veteran agencies describe as home to New York’s largest veteran population. New York has 688,611 veterans, according to the NYS Office for the Aging, and a 2022 Rockefeller Institute report said the state has more than 675,000 veterans, the sixth-largest veteran population in the country.
Honor Flight Long Island said its Fall Flight was scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 4, 2025, and would take 46 Long Island veterans to see the memorials that honor their service, meet with service branch representatives and exchange stories with one another. The organization’s mission is to bring veterans to Washington so they can stand at the memorials that reflect the wars they fought and the decades that followed.
The program dates to 2005, one year after President George W. Bush dedicated the World War II Memorial on May 29, 2004. Honor Flight Long Island says the national effort was launched by Earl Morse and Jeff Miller, turning a single act of commemoration into a recurring trip for aging veterans whose memories are now part of the country’s public record.
That sense of memory extends to veterans who never got the chance to make the journey themselves. Honor Flight Long Island’s Flags of Our Heroes initiative, conceived by the late Dave Bauer, a Vietnam veteran, Purple Heart recipient and former Honor Flight Network board member, was created to honor veterans who died before they could visit the memorials and to give families a way to see their loved one shown respect there.
The Suffolk trip also reflected the local network that keeps veteran recognition visible year-round. The Suffolk County Veterans Service Agency is based at the H. Lee Dennison Executive Office Building in Hauppauge, and the New York State Department of Veterans’ Services lists a Veterans Crisis Line at 988, Press 1 for veterans seeking help.
For Suffolk families, the Honor Flight put the county’s veteran legacy on display in Washington and underscored how much of that legacy still lives in neighborhoods from Hauppauge to Southampton.
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