Now L.B. Scott of Lawton wants to encourage other veterans to take advantage of the Veteran Honor Flight program.

"Veteran Honor Flight has been in existence since 1995, and their sole mission is to make it possible for World War II and other veterans to go to the memorials in Washington, D.C.," Scott said.

It's a nonprofit organization supported through donations from big-name companies, he said. More than 30,000 veterans have made the trip already, and the organization is taking more all the time.

Scott credits his daughter, Eva Marie Hennessee, with making it possible for him to go. A local nurse, she made sure he had a wheelchair handy when he got tired. Scott's wife of 61 years, Shirley, who used to enjoy their summers in Alaska and winters in Hawaii, is no longer able to travel.

Each veteran must be accompanied by a guardian, so Scott said that if not for his daughter, he wouldn't have been able to make the trip. "She helped me in every way, and she took all these pictures," he said.

Scott and his daughter got to meet former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole, a fellow World War II veteran who makes every one of the veteran assemblies, and his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Dole. To add to their enjoyment, Eva Marie's sister, Pamela Adams of Peachtree City, Ga., and her daughter, Rebecca, happened to be in D.C. for a horse show

One of their fellow tour-goers was an ex-prisoner of war from Oklahoma City, Delbert Coulter, who turned out to be friends with Lawton's own ex-POW, Dr. Jack Spencer.

Scott said they flew to Baltimore on Friday, spent Saturday touring the memorials with a tour guide who explained everything, and returned home Sunday. They stayed at the Hilton, and all of it was completely free, for both of them.

In addition to the memorials, they got to see the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery.

Scott, 89, is originally from Waco, Texas. He entered the Army in 1938, and his first duty station was in Hawaii. There, he was assigned to A Battery, 55th Coast Artillery, right at the entrance to Pearl Harbor. Their mission was harbor defense.

Scott was in Louisiana on 90 days' leave when the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred. All military personnel were ordered to return at once. He went to San Francisco, hopped a ship and arrived back in Honolulu on Christmas Eve.

"That was a mess if ever I've seen it," he said.

The soldiers hadn't showered or changed clothes in a month, and they were shooting at the bushes because they were afraid the Japanese might still be on the island. Scott, a sergeant at the time, put a stop to that by telling them, "if you shoot, you'd better have a dead body to show for it." He also took them over to Schofield Barracks to get cleaned up.

He spent the war in places like New Guinea and the Philippines.

"We were on Mindanao, way in the back country fighting the Japanese. The war was winding down, but the Japanese were going farther and farther back into the interior," he said.

Finally the war ended, and his unit boarded ships for the first occupation of Japan. Scott said he wanted to go, and he was promised a promotion to first sergeant if he did. They landed at Matsuyama on Shikoku Island, and Scott remained in Japan with the occupation forces until 1949. He married Shirley in Japan on June 27, 1948.

He came to Fort Sill in 1949, but in 1950 he was shipped to Korea with the 17th Field Artillery. Eva Marie was three months old when he left in June 1950, and he didn't get back until December 1951.

The 17th Field Artillery was on the other side of the Chosin Reservoir from the famous "Frozen Chosin." They were cut off by the Chinese near the Yalu River. One or two of their men were badly wounded, and the unit lost one of its 8-inch howitzers and a tractor, said Scott.

Scott was first sergeant of his battery, and Capt. Leon Crenshaw was his battery commander. Crenshaw persuaded Scott to take a battlefield commission, promising him he would get a promotion within six months. He did, and he ended up becoming a battery commander before he left Korea, when another captain was taken prisoner. It meant he had to stay a month longer.

Scott retired from the Army as a major in 1961. His first job as a civilian was working for Justice of the Peace Marvin Cameron. He served as a deputy under three Comanche County sheriffs and he also worked for a while as a private investigator and as an enforcement officer for the financial responsibility division of the Department of Public Safety.