The Tosa West Stars and Stripes Honor Flight Fundraiser concluded Friday, December 2. Tosa West students and staff raised exactly 2,000 dollars for Stars and Stripes Honor Flight

Tosa West Social Studies teacher Chad Mateske organized the fundraiser. He expressed gratitude towards all students and families that donated.

“Donating to Honor Flight in general is important because it’s a chance for people to demonstrate appreciation for those who were in the military. The rest of us get to live our lives daily, how we choose to freely without having to worry about having to go fight city block to city block to protect our own country. And so it’s a chance to do that,” said Mateske.

Stars and Stripes Honor Flight was founded with the goal of allowing veterans to go see the memorials of the wars they fought in at no cost to them. Veterans board planes early in the morning, tour the monuments of Washington, DC and return to an airport with a line of active duty and youth in military programs saluting them, as well as a parade full of family, friends and other citizens grateful for their service.

Honor Flight is an all expenses paid trip for veterans, including travel costs of planes, buses and tours. This occurs 6 times a year, where 2 planes with 165 veterans in each fly out for the day.

The $2,000 raised by the Tosa West community will be enough to send four veterans on this trip.

WTMJ Journalist John Mercure is a part of the Stars and Stripes Honor Flight Board of Directors. He, and all other members of the Honor Flight committee are volunteers that have a common goal of giving veterans a valuable experience.

“The Veterans never pay. So when your school and students donate money, that money goes directly towards us being able to fly veterans to Washington. It goes straight to making sure that our heroes get to spend the day in Washington,” said Mercure. “Almost 98 cents out of every dollar that someone donates goes directly to our mission. We don’t have any paid staff, it’s a completely volunteer organization.”

Students donated money in their third third hour classes. As an incentive, the top three classes that donated the most will receive a donut party. Those classes included Science teacher Tom Schneider, Social Studies teacher Chad Mateske, and Science teacher Kelly Haskell.