WASHINGTON, D.C. (Dakota News Now) - This week, Midwest Honor Flight took 83 veterans to Washington, DC for “One final tour with honor.”

Patrick Branco has always kept himself busy.

“I went to a year of college, and the Dean sent me a special letter saying, ‘Mr. Branco, it might be a good idea if you went and did something else.’ So I went home, told my father I was going to join the Navy, and he said, ‘No, no, no! Join the Coast Guard. We were always jealous of them,’” Branco recounted.

So he did join the Coast Guard in 1973 and later joined the Navy in 1979, serving on the USS Kansas City as a corpsman.

“I loved it. I spent the first year trying to figure out how to get off the ship and the next two years, how can I stay on, because I fell in love with the ocean,” Branco said.

Later

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