Anniversary honors vets
By Kevin Dye
Staff Writer
Musician Jim McBride kept the crowd entertained while they enjoyed dinner at the Madison Senior Living Community’s 15th anniversary party to aid Honor Flight.
A local senior living facility decided to celebrate its 15th anniversary of helping seniors by hosting an event to aid senior veterans in visiting a national memorial built in their honor.
Madison Senior Living Community decided to celebrate its own milestone Wednesday evening by hosting a Hog Roast Jamboree complete with music, dancing and great food, all to raise money to send more local World War II veterans on the Honor Flight Columbus trip to visit the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.
The senior assisted living facility in London is the very first one built by parent company Chancellor Health Partners. They have since built several such senior assisted living facilities in Ohio and West Virginia.
“This is the very first community that Chancellor Health Partners built,” director Jane Herman said. “Their business model is helping seniors and helping the community. That is what we are trying to do today with this fundraiser for Honor Flight, to play a positive role in the community. It has been our pleasure to serve London and Madison County for the last 15 years. Not only that, but we have had some of the finest residents in Madison County choose to live here and it has been our joy to get to know them.”
The Honor Flight trips have been the pet charity of activities coordinator Mary Richey. Riley has taken great steps to create special events at Madison Senior Living to raise money to send Madison County World War II veterans to Washington, D.C. to see their memorial. Richey has even acted as a guardian for several of the veterans on the trips.
“We have a great crowd tonight and appreciate the community helping us to send veterans on the Honor Flight trips,” Richey said. “Madison Senior Living has been supporting Honor Flight for five years now and it’s just the neatest thing to give someone the greatest day in their life. That’s what our resident Lee Forrest told me after he went on the Honor Flight trip, that it was the greatest day in his life to finally see that memorial.”
One past guardian who turned out to support the event was Gary Lightfoot, who looks forward to once again being a guardian for a veteran on an Honor Flight in September.
“It is so gratifying to go on an Honor Flight trip,” Lightfoot said. “We had 87 veterans on the trip I took and it is just unbelievable when you arrive in Baltimore airport and the whole airport is lined from one end to the other with service men to greet the veterans on the trip. My friend Diane Winters’ father Paul Winters was a WWII veteran who passed away and I took his name and made a badge so I could take him to the WWII Memorial with me.”
The event was a great success and by evening’s end over $1,100 had been raised from the Hog Roast Jamboree to aid local veterans to take the Honor Flight trip, illustrating once again what a great community partner Madison Senior Living has been to London and Madison County.
