Local Vietnam vet and Air Force buddy booked on honor flight to D.C.

A Junction City man who has formerly served as that village’s mayor, a member of its village council, and a Perry County commissioner, will be among the passengers on an “honor flight” for U.S. military senior veterans, taking off out of Columbus tomorrow morning, Thursday, May 4.

Ed Keister was in the U.S. Air Force from June 1971 to May 1974, and served in Vietnam and Thailand. It was there he met John Kruse, another member of the Air Force who was bunking in the same building with him at Saigon’s Ton Son Nhut Air Base. The two became fast friends and kept a close connection over the many years since their service together, despite living hundreds of miles apart, Keister in Junction City and Kruse in Iowa and later Nebraska.