You doing this veterans day with your frequent flier miles? i m griff jenkins at bwi airport. fox news. and if you want more are information on how you can help with operation hero miles go to gretawire.com. [bagpipes] and today from coast to coast parades kicked off to honor our veterans. in new york city more than 20,000 people matched down the famed fifth avenue. this is new york s 96th annual veterans day parade. on the west coast more than 100 veterans groups marching through los angeles. thousands lined the streets waving red, white,í. and blue to thank the this year marked 70 years since the end of world war ii: and coming up, president obama ignored veteran and marine andrew tahmooressi when he was stuck in that mexican prison. so is the president ignoring another marine? i will tell you what i think
The president urging and thoughts long after veterans day. on the record would like to extend our thank you to those who have served to protect our freedoms. and, of course, there are many ways for all of us to just say thank you for the sacrifices made by our veterans. on the record s griff jenkins though went to bwi airport to tell us about a very special program. congressman dutch started a program to provide free airline tickets for wounded troops and their families being treatedaxin a medical or v.a. facility somewhere in the u.s. [cheers and applause] my staff and i came together and we put together a program called operation hero. basically what the program was we went out and we asked the public to donate their frequent flier miles to the operation hero miles program so the troops, who were dropped off at airports on the east coast would not have to pay their own way
They are in hospitals for times six months to a year and they are in washington, d.c., it is very important for them to be with their families. whether they are married, their are children. and so but it costs money and the fisher house only has a certain amount of rooms for the families to live in. we decided to ask people in our country to donate their hotel reward points to the troops to their families so fly here on operation hero miles for free and stay in hotels for free. i don t like staying in hotels so i never give them my number. i had my assistant go back through and i had 26,000 on marriott which is not a lot and i gave my 26,000. i wish i had given more and i will give more. that is about three or four days at a marriott. that is great, greta. and you really helped us get operation hero miles started. i was on 100 national radio shows to try to promote operation hero miles.