Veterans return from first all-women Honor Flight

NAPLES, Fla. – More than a thousand people waited at the Naples Airport this past to welcome a group of veterans in their return from the first all-female Honor Flight to Washington, D.C. this weekend.

One of the women was 91-year-old Florence Weinstein who said people look at her and mistake her military attire as belonging to her husband.

“I go into a store and I’m wearing this hat and invariably a man comes over. He says ‘Oh, is that your husband’s?’ And that is such a putdown” Weinstein said.

Weinstein’s late husband did serve in the U.S. military and she wears his dog tag around her neck. But Weinstein also wears her own dog tag as a symbol of her service to the country. She joined a group of other woman who toured various war memorials in the nation’s capital.

Weinstein said it was an experience of a lifetime — one she that inspired her to stay alive.

“I had a life-threatening experience just recently and I kept dangling this trip in front of me: ‘I want to get better so I can go on this flight,'” she said.

The military vet called the trip “awesome” and was happy to pose in front of a memorial for women. That memorial read” “Women who stepped up were measured as citizens of the nation, not as women. This was a people’s war and everyone was in it.”