Family Care Center Doctor and Nurse Found Connection to Their Mission During a Trip Honoring Veterans
Before their early-morning flight even departed from Kansas City, Missouri, Cecilia Mathis, MD, and Judy Ryman, RN, knew they were going to have the experience of a lifetime serving as one of two medical teams on an Honor Flight celebrating military veterans.
Their arrival in Washington, D.C., only confirmed it.
“The first thing that impressed us was getting off the plane. The entire terminal was standing and clapping,” says Judy, whose brother, SP5 Gary Weber, a U.S. Army veteran, was among the 49 veterans on the April 15 Honor Flight.
Judy was touched to see how deeply moved Gary—who left to serve in Vietnam when she was a teenager—was by the spontaneous display of appreciation in the terminal, one of many meaningful moments the participants experienced over the two-day trip.
From connecting with others over stories of service and sacrifice, to visiting memorials and landmarks, to hearing heartfelt letters of appreciation from family members over dinner, the group that included Honor Flight hubs from several parts of Kansas reminisced and created new memories.
“I feel like this trip honored them well, and we can never repay them for all they gave,” Judy says. “But it was a way to say thank you and that we acknowledge their sacrifice.”
Community focus
In their work caring for patients at the Anderson County Hospital Family Care Center in Garnett, Kansas, Dr. Mathis and Judy take to heart their commitment to caring for patients as they’d want their own family, friends, or neighbors to be cared for. And many times, that’s exactly what they’re doing.
Both have strong, longstanding ties to their east-central Kansas community, and they cherish the role they play in the health and lives of individuals and families—often caring for multiple generations.
This is how they got connected with the Honor Flight. Dr. Mathis knew Tom Horstick when he was principal of her alma mater, Central Heights High School in Richmond, Kansas, about 10 miles from Garnett. Tom, who oversees the Central Heights Honor Flight program, believed both Dr. Mathis and Judy—a longtime friend—would be a perfect fit for one of the local hub’s yearly Honor Flights, responsible for providing medical support for the veterans throughout the trip. And this spring, all the pieces fell into place.
The Central Heights hub connected 12 area veterans with the larger regional Honor Flight program, which brought together several hubs for the April trip. Honor Flights are open to all veterans, focusing first on those who served in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, as well as veterans with terminal illnesses. Since 2005, the Honor Flight Network has celebrated more than 317,000 veterans.
Combined, Anderson County and adjacent Franklin County, where Richmond is located, are home to more than 2,000 veterans, according to U.S. Census figures.
Like Judy, Dr. Mathis had family on this flight: her parents, Lt. Col. Lester and Capt. Barbara Wuertz, who both served in the U.S. Air Force, and her nephew, Ben Wuertz, a student at Central Heights High School, who went through guardian training to be an assistant for her parents on the trip.
“The goal was to make the trip as medically uneventful as we could,” Dr. Mathis says. “And that’s what we did. It was a great trip, so many memories for all the veterans. And it was good for us to watch them have this experience. It adds to the sense of community that we have in caring for the veterans, and really, all our patients.”
Both Dr. Mathis and Judy are grateful to the Central Heights Honor Flight program—and all who made the trip possible—for the invitation and opportunity to be part of this experience.
Making connections
“One of the really significant things for Gary was seeing a name tag of one of the other veterans and realizing that they had been high school classmates 60 years ago,” Judy says. “They were in Vietnam at the same time but didn’t know that until now.”
“Seeing the veterans make connections like that was very touching,” Dr. Mathis says. “My dad loves telling stories, so meeting the other vets and talking to them was right up his alley.”
Dr. Mathis struck up a conversation with a Navy veteran who is also a physician, and they swapped stories—something that’s central to her work in health care.
The experience was a reminder of the mission that drives her every day to know and understand each patient—each person—she encounters, and to do all she can to make a positive impact.
“This experience reiterated my joy in serving my patients and certainly gave me a deeper understanding of what they and their families went through physically, mentally, and emotionally,” Dr. Mathis says. “It gives me a point to connect with my patients on a deeper level and truly empathize with them.”
