Leap of faith | News, Sports, Jobs

Ron Newsum had to make a decision about a contract for a 737 jet in early 2010.

The contract with Sun Country Airlines would cost $72,000. His then-new organization, Brushy Creek Area Honor Flight, had $3,000 in the bank.

The man from Fort Dodge signed the contract.

It was a leap of faith that paid off spectacularly. The first Brushy Creek Area Honor Flight trip to Washington, D.C., with a jet full of World War II veterans was completed in the spring of 2010. Two more trips were made that year to take veterans to the nation’s war memorials.

Now, 14 years after that first flight, 3,500 veterans from 240 communities have participated in the Honor Flights 25 times.

While money may have been a concern when Newsum signed that first contract, it isn’t anymore. The Brushy Creek Area Honor Flight has no corporate sponsors, but a steady stream of donations and fundraisers has ensured that no veteran has ever had to pay for their Honor Flight trip.

“We didn’t have to beg for a single cent,” said Newsum.

The Brushy Creek Area Honor Flight program is a product of Newsum’s vision. He had heard about the national Honor Flight program, with chapters across the country bringing World War II veterans to Washington. And he wanted to bring his stepfather, the late Clem Hentges, to the nation’s capital. Hentges was a Navy veteran who had served on small PT boats (patrol torpedoes) in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Newsum went to work and gathered a number of other area residents to form a committee that would conduct the honor flights.

One of the first things the group had to do was pick a name. Newsum recalled that in 2009, there was an Honor Flight operation in Des Moines that called itself Central Iowa and one in Mason City that called itself Northern Iowa. With two obvious possible names already taken, the committee settled on Brushy Creek, after the creek that flows into the massive lake at Brushy Creek State Recreation Area.

Hentges was aboard that first Honor Flight trip. Newsum wiped tears from his eyes as he watched his stepfather being escorted off the plane and onto the tarmac at Dulles International Airport in the Virginia suburb of Washington.

Since that day, Newsum has worked tirelessly to organize a series of honorary flights.

Honor flights are not the first patriotic action Newsum has initiated for his community.

Thanks to one of his ideas, an American flag now flies from a tall pole in the middle of the Des Moines River.

He calls the project Old Glory on the River. The first flag was raised at that location on June 14, 2004, Flag Day.

Newsum said he got the idea for the flagpole while participating in a cleanup of the Des Moines River in preparation for a dragon boat festival, which was held on the river instead of at Badger Lake at the time.

Newsum said that while he was working, he looked at a pier in the middle of the water that once supported the old Bennett Viaduct and thought: “What a beautiful place for an American flag.”

He received permission from Mayor Will Patterson to erect a flagpole on the bridge pier.

Crews from McGough Construction Co. drilled a six-foot hole in the pier and installed an 80-foot flagpole in the hole.

When the flag needs to be replaced, Fort Dodge firefighters go out in a boat to raise a new flag.

“It’s been such a satisfying project,” he said.

He is retired from a career in insurance and financial services, a background that prepared him for one of his first community service opportunities, when he volunteered to help seniors navigate the various health insurance plans available to them.

Newsum, who served in the Iowa Air National Guard, received the Veteran of the Year Award from the Fort Dodge Veterans Council. But he’s not motivated by plaques or certificates.

“The more you give, the more you get back,” he said.