VetsRoll honors vets with bus trip
MONROE - Every year, veterans of foreign wars can be brought together to go on a trip to Washington D.C.
Veterans are given a choice of going on a one-day trip by flying or taking a four-day trip by bus. Veterans of wars before 1963 get to go on this trip for free through an application process.
The purpose of this trip is for veterans to visit various monuments throughout Washington for "closure, gratitude and respect," said Lori Lovejoy, a VetsRoll volunteer from Monroe.
Lovejoy, who returned this week from a VetsRoll bus trip, said she can't express how grateful she is for the experience.
Because she went as a helper to assist vets, she had to pay her own trip expenses.
It was worth it.
"It's not enough money to express the gratitude I got out of the trip," she said.
She said veterans from more than 19 states pile onto 10 buses and travel halfway across the country with police escorts and people waving American flags over highway overpasses along the way.
For information about VetsRoll, visit www.VetsRoll.org.
- David Litin
"It's called the 'Red, White, and Blue Room,'" she said.
The 91-year-old Navy veteran worked as a medic in Texas and the Chicago suburbs during the final stages of World War II. Born and raised in Racine, Mills started thinking about joining the Navy at the age of 19 but she couldn't join until she was 21.
"I had all of the papers signed when I was 20," she said.
Alice told her friend Lois that she wanted to join the Navy. "She said 'I'm going in with you.'"
The women went to Milwaukee to enlist and have their physical examinations. Together, they left for New York City and stopped at Niagara Falls along the way.
"I could hear the falls at night," she recalled.
Not long after arriving in New York, Alice and Lois were sent to the Bronx to begin their training. In the heart of the Bronx, nine girls were cramped in an apartment with only one small bathroom and a tiny kitchen.
"We all got along good," she said.
Alice said they spent eight or nine weeks in the Bronx in the gyms "exercising" and when possible, sightseeing at famous landmarks including the Empire State Building and Broadway.
"We were always so sore," she said. "We could hardly sit."
By the end of her training, Alice was a medic and was sent to Corpus Christi, Texas.
Upon arriving, there was a big welcoming party. It was there she was asked to dance by a man who would later become her husband.
"He kissed me that night," Alice said.
Freeman Mills had left home at the age of 13, after his father abruptly left his mother and four siblings at home, and joined the Navy when he could.
Alice recalled he often sent a girl over to wake her up and give her breakfast specially prepared by him.
"We were so close at that time," she said.
They continued their courtship throughout their years in Texas. She worked in the maternity ward where she recalls soldiers being by their wives' side when their babies were born. Eventually, Alice took care of soldiers who were wounded during training.
As time went on, Freeman and Lois were transferred to different sites. Freeman ended up in San Francisco, the last place before men were shipped off to Japan, and Lois was sent to another site in Texas more than 500 miles away.
"I was lonesome," she said. Eventually, she was transferred to the Naval Station Great Lakes just outside Chicago.
But shortly thereafter, Mills' mother fell ill. She and Freeman took a leave to care for her, only to be greeted by the news that the war had ended.
"We were dancing in downtown Racine," she said.
They married in 1946. He had a job as an x-ray technician with the local hospital; Freeman later found a job at the Monroe Clinic. The couple went on to have a total of seven children; two are living today.
In December, Freeman died of a stroke.
And this weekend, Alice plans to visit his grave in Racine for the first time since his death.