HONORING OUR WWII VETS

Bob Dole, a venerable 86 years old now, was back in the Washington limelight over the weekend, appearing on ABC TV to dispense counsel on a bipartisan approach to health care, popping up in newspapers explaining how to cut a deal, even suggesting Gen. David Petraeus as a presidential possibility.

But his most heartfelt weekend activity took place elsewhere, out of sight of Washington politicos and devoid of any potential for gain or notoriety. It came under a brilliant Saturday-morning sun, when the former Republican presidential candidate, now a bit more frail than most Americans recall him, stepped out of a car and strode to the National World War II Memorial to greet, one by one, 108 fellow World War II veterans who had been flown to Washington from South Carolina to see the monument built in their honor.

A wheelchair-bound World War II veteran visited the World War II Memorial in Washington on Saturday.

To these veterans, 29 of them in wheelchairs and several toting oxygen tanks, Mr. Dole was like a rock star. They gathered around to shake hands, to have their pictures taken with him, to crack a joke about their ages.

World War II was, after all, Bob Dole's war too, the violence of which left him permanently without use of his right arm, and these were his comrades in arms. And the spectacular granite structure behind them on the National Mall is, in many ways, Mr. Dole's memorial to them, one for which he spent years crusading in the Senate.

This is a scene that Mr. Dole quietly repeats week after week. A grass-roots organization, the Honor Flight Network, has sprung up with the sole purpose of flying World War II veterans to Washington so they have a chance, in the autumn of their lives, to see the memorial built to mark The Good War in which they fought.

When they come, Bob Dole of Kansas is there to greet them. When he was in the hospital with leg problems awhile back, his wife, Elizabeth, stood in for him. This month alone, Mr. Dole says, there will be about 3,000 veterans coming from across the nation. "I'm going to be in town. I'm going to be there, if I'm in good health," he says.

Mr. Dole, a former Senate majority leader whom Bill Clinton defeated to win re-election as president in 1996, is a renowned wisecracker never known to wear his heart on his sleeve. But to watch him Saturday morning was to see that this is an affair of the heart. First the 108 South Carolina veterans lined up with him for a group picture, after which the former senator made a few remarks thanking them for their service. Then the veterans began milling around Mr. Dole, they in their baseball caps and he in his signature white dress shirt and cuff links, to shake hands and pose for individual pictures.

For those in wheelchairs, he leaned down to get more easily in the picture frame. To one such gentleman, he cracked, "What are you, about 75?" The man replied that he's actually 90 years old. "Ninety?" Mr. Dole responded in mock horror. "Any other 90s?" A second veteran, leaning on a cane nearby, replied simply, "94." Mr. Dole, still the politician, was careful to see that no spouse, son or daughter along for the trip was left out of the pictures. He took careful note of a white-haired Navy nurse in a wheelchair.

There was an odd, unspoken bond between the political figure and the veterans. "I've been knowing him for a long time," said Edward Hutto, who joined the Navy at 17 and now is seeing his nation's capital for the first time. "Of course, I've never met him before."

By the end of this year, the Honor Flight organization will have flown some 42,000 such veterans, at no cost to them, to Washington to see the memorial. State chapters raise money from individual donations, fund-raisers run by churches and Boy Scout troops, and the occasional corporate donation. Bill Dukes, the South Carolina Honor Flight organizer, says he will bring 800 veterans from his state to Washington this year, with the money coming from, among other places, University of South Carolina students who raised more than $30,000, and a donation from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of South Carolina.

For Mr. Dole, there's a sense of urgency to this final World War II mission. By one estimate, 1,000 World War II veterans die every day. "We can't wait long," he says. "The average age is 84 or 85."

The payoff comes in the form of a letter Mr. Dole received from an Ohio veteran just after his visit. "I truly felt like a 'hero for a day,'" he wrote. "This came at a time for me, for the past 3 years, I had been having a very difficult time emotionally and my self esteem was at rock bottom." Mr. Dole's talk to his group, the veteran wrote, "boosted my self esteem to where I think maybe I really did make a difference."

Which, in the end, may be as meaningful a national contribution as the proposed health overhaul Mr. Dole has composed with former Senate leaders from both parties. "At 86, you can still be a bit player," he muses. "At least make a cameo."