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With months of planning and weekly meetings with Mark Ernst and Tracy Frink of the Yankee Air Museum, our photo session at Willow Run was finally upon us. But not without a few bumps in the tarmac. First we were scheduled to shoot the photo on Wednesday the 27th but rain forced us to cancel.  That meant myself and my crew at Visionalist of Alicia, Lidia and Ben would have to call over 400 hundred people on Tuesday, not a day I ever want to repeat.

So we set our sights on Thursday the 28th.  We arrived early and met up with the crew of Yankee and started the planning for our 400-person photo shoot.  First, by marking the ground in front of the B-17 with colored chalk so our WWII heroes would know were to stand. Our plan was to pass out color squares of paper and have the Veterans simply go to the colors given to them.

Before our veterans arrived we had the honor of doing a special interview with some of the Tuskegee Airmen: Alphonso Harper, Alexander Jefferson, Cornelius Davis, Richard Jennings.  Set in front of a P-51, we listened to them talk about the days of flying and how proud they were that they never lost a bomber.  Protecting bombers and flying in the war was, “extraordinarily exciting.”   

The time came when the first buses starting arriving with veterans.  We owe a HUGE thanks to Royal Transportation for assisting with shuttling, even the though the waits were long due to air traffic.  This limited our ability to allow the buses to come and go as quickly as possible.  Nonetheless, the hanger filled, and filled, and filled.  Before we knew it the 600 chairs were all occupied.  We must have had 1500 people there.  We had buses from retirement centers and nursing homes.  The Presbyterian Village brought several of their veterans.

Our photo shoot had grown beyond our imagination.  Somehow the RSVP forms and colored pieces of paper seemed like a fruitless effort to organize. With so many people, no one could hear the PA, and with patience running thin, there were some tense moments. I personally have to give Tracy, the operations director, and her team of Yankee volunteers a great deal of credit for managing this hectic scenario.

Still, the significance of the day and the warm feelings of veterans and loved ones overcame any inconvenience.

So, when the time came, and not a moment to soon, we announced as loud as we could “EVERYONE TO THE B-17!”  What an amazing sight to see.  As we all helped gather our own Greatest Generation in front of the Yankee Lady, the proud star of the Yankee Air museum, one amazing photo was taken.  I stood there and watched as these proud soldiers of history’s most intense war posed for this special picture.  Each man or woman held a photograph of themselves from WWII.  We were touched, and the moment meant so much to all of us.  But we know that as the years pass, that moment will mean even more, as the faces in that photo slowly fade away from our lives.
We are all humbled by the lessons of this generation, the one we call the greatest.  We thank all of them that came out, and we thank every loved one who took the time to bring them. 

We sincerely apologize to anyone that was inconvenienced by any delays in the bus service or the wait in general.

Keith Famie
Executive Producer