Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Don Kriebel
Don Kriebel poses at the Arlington National Cemetery Museum in Washington D.C. Kriebel joined an Inland Northwest Honor Flight to Washington D.C. earlier this year.
Don Kriebel of Garfield was one of 159 veterans on the year’s last Inland Northwest Honor Flight to Washington, D.C., in September.
“It was fantastic,” he said. “If you really want to know for sure, the best part, it was landing with one motor.”
It happened on the way back, when the group’s Sun Air charter plane lost power in an engine and had to land in Pittsburgh.
The 737 later arrived in Spokane, where 200 people greeted the local veterans (and attendees), including nine from World War II, 63 from Korea and eight from the Vietnam War.
In the nation’s capital – with a motorcade escorting three buses through traffic – the group visited the Marine Corps Memorial, Air Force Memorial, Arlington National Cemetery, Women of Military Service museum at Arlington, World War II Memorial, Korean War Memorial, Vietnam Memorial and the Navy Memorial.
“Somebody called me ‘sir’ and I said, ‘No, I was just a sergeant,’” Kriebel said.
It was his second time across the Mississippi and first in D.C.
“I’d never seen any of it,” he said.
Kriebel was born in a house between Palouse and Garfield 83 years ago, and lived in that house for the next 72 years.
In the fall after graduation from Garfield High School in 1952, he got a draft notice.
“It was the day Eisenhower got elected president,” he said.
The youngest child of six, Kriebel went to Army boot camp at Camp Roberts, Calif., before boarding a troop ship to Japan for training as a field wireman for telephones.
On the way, his favorite pastime was lying on the deck watching for whales and flying fish.
At one point, two days out from Japan, the ship’s lookout spotted a gray, circular shape in the water ahead.
It was a sea mine left from World War II which had concluded seven years before.
Guns of the ship were aimed, and it was blown up.
In Korea, Kriebel spent 18 months in an area north of Seoul.
His job was to string and lay telephone lines – three steel wires and four copper wires on two sides, twisted.
“In ‘52, we didn’t use radios much,” he said.
Kriebel returned after his service to farm his father’s land. He later worked for Cascade Flying Service.
“I just want people to know about the Honor Flights so they can go,” he said.
For more information, Inland Northwest Honor Flights can be reached at (509) 624-0222.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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