Johnny Postlewaite kisses Jeanie Petermann goodbye before boarding the bus to Portland on Sunday, April 27. (Lukas Prinos/The Astorian)

Three Seaside veterans who have been honored with a four-day trip to Washington, D.C., kicked off their journey Sunday with an escort out of town by the Seaside Police Department and Seaside Fire & Rescue.

Johnny Postlewaite, Steve Peterson and Jerry Horst were chosen to go on the Journey of Heroes, a program sponsored by AARP. They were nominated for the trip by Helen Pringle, the Life Enrichment Director at Neawanna by the Sea retirement home where all three veterans live.

“We nominated five, and these three amazing gentlemen get to go,” Pringle said. “It’s amazing. They get to spend four days visiting all the memorials, and it’s a full-expense paid trip.”

The trip is the first one taken by Seaside veterans since the COVID-19 pandemic. Neawanna by the Sea has been the only retirement home in Clatsop County to nominate veterans for the program, and the locals will be joined on their trip by 12 other veterans from Oregon and Nevada.

The group landed in Washington, D.C., on Monday night. On Tuesday, the veterans, alongside their travel companions, began with a visit to the Arlington National Cemetery, the National Mall, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial. They also had the chance to visit the World War II and the Korean War Veterans memorials.

Postlewaite, an active member of the American Legion who served two Army terms in Vietnam during the Vietnam War, said he most looked forward to getting to see the name of his fallen friend and fellow soldier, Dale Perkins, at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

For Peterson, an Air Force veteran who served some time in Okinawa, Japan, before joining the Navy Reserves, this will be his first time in Washington, D.C. He will also be looking for a name on the Vietnam memorial — a man from his hometown who was shot down during the war.

“I’m praising God for it,” he said of the chance to go on the trip. “I am a history buff.”

Horst, an Air Force veteran, said he is honored to revisit Washington, D.C. He served in an honor guard for John F. Kennedy when the then-president visited his Air Force base.

“I saw him and Jackie — and Jackie, she was just so Jackie, just like you would expect,” he said. “But we were honor guard, and we had the streets all lined with military, helicopters all over the place, and people on roofs with shotguns and machine guns … Then the next day, they took us off and told us he was shot. So on November 21, I was an honor guard, and November 22, 1963, he was assassinated.”

On Wednesday, the veterans visited the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, which displays thousands of aviation and space artifacts, before attending a special gathering back at their hotel. And on Thursday, after a tour of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial and the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, they were scheduled to return home.

For the trio, the trip is also part of a welcome shift away from the negative attitudes that older veterans often used to experience, especially during and after the Vietnam War.

“Now, there’s more people thanking veterans for their service,” Horst said. “I mean, I can tell people I’m a veteran — ‘Thank you for your service.’ They didn’t do that in ‘63 to ‘68.”