Around Town: Newport veteran to visit WWII memorial with nonprofit’s help
A World War II veteran from Newport Beach will travel to Washington, D.C., this week as part of an Ohio-based nonprofit’s mission to send veterans to war memorials in the nation’s capital.
Bill Stewart, 86, of Balboa Island is scheduled to leave Friday on the three-day trip with Honor Flight’s Southland chapter.
Stewart enlisted in 1946 at age 17 in a branch of the Army that eventually became the Air Force. He joined a few months before the official end of World War II on Dec. 31, 1946. He also was a reservist in the Korean War.
“I am no hero,” Stewart said in an email. “I didn’t shoot at anyone and was not shot at. I just went where I was told to go and did my job, first as an auto mechanic, then as a radar technician.”
He said that after his trip, he plans to help “our Orange County heroes learn of this great project and get them to D.C. to see their war memorials.”
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Service offers free designated drivers Saturday night in O.C.
Be My Designated Driver, a nationwide service, will offer free designated drivers to residents in Orange County on Saturday night as part of its 24-region Designated Driver Tour.
Between 9 p.m. and 2 a.m., customers can request a pickup at no charge using the BeMyDD smartphone app, and a team of drivers will go to the customer’s location — one to drive the customer and his or her car home safely and the other to retrieve the designated driver afterward.
The program is intended to reduce the rate of drunk driving deaths throughout the 76 markets it serves.
For instructions on receiving the free service Saturday night, visit www.BeMyDD.com/DDTour.
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Families of organ donors to be honored
Families of organ donors will be recognized at Hoag Hospital’s Tree of Life memorial event Oct. 29.
The event is co-presented by OneLegacy, a nonprofit dedicated to saving lives through organ, eye and tissue donation. The families of recent donors at Hoag will receive a certificate and a replica of a leaf bearing the name of their loved one that will hang on the Tree of Life, a metal sculpture installed in 2011.
Between 2006 and 2014, Hoag Hospital had 59 organ donors, the most of any non-trauma hospital in Orange County, according to a news release.
The ceremony will be held from 4 to 5 p.m. at the Joan and Andy Fimiano Emergency Pavilion patio at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach.