St. John U.S. Navy Vietnam War veteran gets long-awaited welcome home
Jim Koeling lives by the belief that it is more blessed to give than to receive.
But when the 75-year-old St. John volunteer was chosen to receive an Honor Flight to Washington D.C. this fall, he happily allowed himself the blessing.
The U.S. Navy veteran enlisted during the Vietnam War as a teenager and served two tours of duty as a radarman. Koeling said, like many other Vietnam veterans, he didn’t talk much about the war after he came home.
“If you’re not of my age group, you don’t have an understanding of the distaste for the war,” Koeling said. “You weren’t exactly welcomed back. Most of us have a distaste for the whole thing as a result of that.”
Koeling went on to be an electrician with the United Auto Workers, retiring in 2012. In 2004, he began volunteering as a eucharistic minister in Franciscan Health Dyer’s spiritual care department.
Koeling also volunteers with the wheelchair ramp ministry with St. Michael’s Rebuilding Hope Mission Team at St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Parish in Schererville.
While he found the volunteer work rewarding, he said it wasn’t until he attended a parade in Lowell in 2018 that he truly felt at peace with his military service.
“They had people holding posters for fallen heroes,” Koeling said. “They’d walk 25 feet and stop. There’d be silence and they’d raise the posters over their heads and would get a wave of applause. At that time, I can’t really explain it, but I felt a comfort in what I did.”
Shortly thereafter, Koeling applied for a trip through Honor Flight Chicago. The organization, founded in 2008, recognizes America’s senior war veterans by flying them to Washington, D.C. for a one day, all expenses paid trip to tour the memorials built in their honor.
This August, he got a call inviting him to an Honor Flight on Sept. 20 out of Chicago’s Midway Airport. Koeling was one of 116 veterans on the trip. His daughter, son and son-in-law accompanied him at stops along the way in D.C., with his daughter serving as his official guardian or tour companion.
“Everywhere you go, people are shaking your hand,” he said. “I must have shaken at least 1,000 hands that day.”
Koeling said the stop at the Vietnam War Memorial was particularly moving.
“I had a dear friend who was killed two days before he was supposed to go home in ’68,” Koeling said. “I brought his picture and left it at the wall.”
On the flight home, he was handed a large envelope filled with letters thanking him for his service, including those from a kindergarten class at Homer Iddings Elementary School in Merrillville and Sen. Todd Young.
When they got off the plane at Midway, the veterans were met by a band, police officers and members of the military.
“They saluted and shook our hands,” he said. “People were saying, ‘Welcome home,’ and ‘Thank you for your service.’ It was great.”
The veterans took an elevator to another floor and were met by another surprise.
“There were about 200 people there with balloons and signs,” Koeling said. “I was looking for my wife. I had no idea what was coming. Finally, we were coming around the corner for baggage and the bagpipers started playing as we were coming into the section where the families were.”
Recruits from the Great Lakes Naval Station were waiting there to escort the veterans on the final leg of their journey. Koeling’s recruit was just 18, about the age he was when he enlisted.
“This would have been like when the astronauts came home,” Koeling said of the welcome home he received at the airport. “It was the greatest thing of my life, to be adulated like that.”
The next day, Koeling signed up to be an Honor Flight volunteer.
“I said I’d be a guardian for people who need one,” he said.
Joanna Benignetti, manager of service excellence and volunteers at Franciscan Health Dyer, said she knows Koeling will serve his fellow veterans well.
“We are very blessed to have Jim as a volunteer,” Benignetti said. “Jim embodies the Franciscan mission and values to everyone he meets. We are so happy he was able to take this trip with Honor Flight Chicago and to let others give back to him.”
Information about volunteer opportunities at Franciscan Health hospitals is available online at https://www.franciscanhealth.org/community/volunteer.
