Veteran to Veteran: Two GE Aerospace Team Members Explain What It Takes to Be an Honor Flight Guardian

Long before they joined GE Aerospace, Jennifer Ferrell and Al Withrow worked with technology in places where it was a matter of life or death. As a U.S. Army communications specialist, Ferrell began her 20-year career finding telephone poles for land lines and ended it securing satellite links, deploying to Djibouti and other regions. Withrow did his 23 years in the U.S. Air Force working in engine maintenance, beginning at a German airbase where he serviced F110 engines in F-16 fighter jets. While different paths led each to GE Aerospace, the company’s Veterans Network recently introduced them both to one of their most rewarding roles yet: Guardians on Honor Flights that carry veterans to war memorials in Washington, D.C. It’s a service that not only aligns with GE Aerospace’s core mission — to lift people up and bring them home safely — but is, Ferrell says, “a life-changing experience” for Guardians and vets alike.

Ferrell’s secondary Army role as safety leader led her to similar work at GE Aerospace in 2015, where for the past five years she’s been the environment, health, and safety (EHS) and security leader at the company’s plant in Wilmington, North Carolina, and has helped start the site’s Veterans Network chapter. Withrow joined GE Aerospace in 2017, and is now senior production and control manager at the company’s facility in Huntsville, Alabama, where he also helped get a Veterans Network chapter up and running. They are among the many veterans who have found a natural home at GE Aerospace. “When I came out here to Huntsville, it connected me back to where I started,” says Withrow. 

While Ferrell made her first Honor Flight earlier in the spring, Withrow and his wife, who is also a veteran, will serve with 13 other Guardians supporting 15 veterans for an Honor Flight beginning on November 7. “I’m really committed to ensuring that GE Aerospace’s bond with the military stays solid,” he says.

In addition to providing U.S. and allied militaries with best-in-class engines and technologies, the company has a long history of working with veteran’s organizations. In honor of Veterans Day and Remembrance Day, GE Aerospace and the GE Aerospace Foundation donated more than $1 million to 25 organizations across the U.S. and U.K., including the Fisher House Foundation and the Forces Employment Charity. So far this year the Veterans Network has contributed nearly 2,000 volunteer hours through more than 20 volunteer activities. The Honor Flights are just one more example of their work. 

One More Deployment

The first Honor Flight took off in 2005, when two veterans in Springfield, Ohio, arranged for six small planes to carry 12 World War II veterans to visit the newly completed National World War II Memorial in D.C. As the program expanded, Honor Flights began to include veterans from the Korean War and Vietnam War. Organizers make great efforts to prioritize older veterans. “At our Cape Fear hub, we typically have 20 or 30 vets who don’t make the cut because so many people want to do it,” says Ferrell, who led a GE Aerospace fundraising effort for the program before becoming a Guardian herself on a flight with 85 veterans earlier this year, the Cape Fear hub’s biggest thus far. “We’ve got one vet we’re trying to get on next year’s flight who’s 100 years old,” she says. 

A Guardian meets the vet a month before the flight and supports them through stages reminiscent of military service. There’s a physical, to ensure that the veteran is fit for duty, then a day of basic training. “That’s when we get together and learn what’s expected,” Ferrell says. “Very much like when you deploy with fellow soldiers, only in a quick and condensed way.” 

Ferrell’s vet, Dennis, had been an infantry soldier in Vietnam. “The hours on the plane let us have a meaningful conversation,” Ferrell says. “It’s the kind you have with other veterans, where you don’t necessarily ask questions.” For both vet and Guardian, the events that take place on the day of the flight can be almost overwhelming. “They weren’t expecting water cannons to be firing over the jet as we taxied at airport,” Ferrell says. “They weren’t expecting to get a full cannon salute, or a full military band playing when we arrived at Ronald Reagan Airport in D.C. I don’t think they really grasped what was in store for them.”

When Ferrell’s Honor Flight contingent made its way through the Dulles Airport toward the buses, travelers waiting in the terminal saw them and spontaneously applauded. “This was a great surprise to him,” Ferrell says of Dennis. 

The flight home included a mail call, where vets receive letters that school kids and other supporters have written, thanking them for their service. And when they landed back home — at 10:30 on a Saturday night — they found “300-plus people, over-filling our tiny little baby airport in Wilmington,” Ferrell recalls. “Fans, family members, schools, different military personnel. Holding a huge ‘Welcome Home’ sign.” Including Dennis’s wife, all of which made for an emotional return.

Tears of Joy

The vast majority of Guardians are veterans themselves, though civilians are involved as well. Withrow noted that the one civilian performing the service on his upcoming Honor Flight had to clear quite a high bar. 

“We put a lot of thought into who that civilian should be, because we wanted someone who can really engage with the veteran and not just be a kind of babysitter,” he says. “Veterans have a preexisting bond with other veterans.” They might also notice things about the Honor Flight experience that few non-veterans would pick up on. 

Ferrell points to the homecoming as an especially powerful example. “I know that I had a huge send-off when I deployed and another one when I came home,” says Ferrell. “That’s something many of them didn’t get to experience when they came home.” 

Ferrell and Withrow won’t soon forget having a chance to make this right. “I’m not a big crier but I was bawling at the end of the flight,” Ferrell says. “To see my vet experience all that, to feel the absolute joy in the space. Everyone was crying.”