The Maine Volunteers Who Never Miss a Troop Flight

On a March morning in 1991, a few hundred people drove to Bangor International Airport in Maine to welcome home the first troops returning from Operation Desert Storm. Thirty-five years later, someone from that same crowd is still there for every single flight, day or night.

It Started With One Homecoming

The first planeload of returning Desert Storm troops landed in Bangor on March 9, 1991. Word had spread fast, and hundreds of Mainers showed up on their own to cheer them through the terminal.

One moment made the local news travel further than anyone expected. An Army sergeant borrowed a saxophone from a local high school student and played "The Star-Spangled Banner" for the crowd. Footage of it aired around the world within a day.

The crowds kept coming back for every flight that year, sometimes more than a thousand people deep. When the war-related flights slowed down, a handful of volunteers, including Korean War veteran Everett Steele, kept meeting the smaller number of military flights that still came through.

What They Do For Every Flight

When Operation Iraqi Freedom began in 2003, the airport needed a coordinated group to clear volunteers through security for each arrival. That's when the informal welcoming committee became an organized one: the Maine Troop Greeters.

The routine has barely changed since. For every flight, volunteers offer each service member a handshake, a cookie, and the use of a free cell phone to call home. Local businesses keep the "troop room" stocked, including thousands of cookies donated by a nearby Sam's Club.

A local phone company began donating handsets and free minutes to the troops in the tradition's early years, and two more carriers joined in by 2004.

Flights Don't Wait for Business Hours

Bangor sits on one of the shortest refueling routes between the United States and Europe, so military charter flights stop there at all hours, including well past midnight.

The greeters keep a phone tree so someone can be paged and get to the airport whenever a flight is inbound, no matter the hour.

The Ones Who Never Missed a Flight

In 2009, the documentary "The Way We Get By" followed three of the group's longtime volunteers, then in their seventies and eighties, as they kept showing up through failing health and personal loss because the troops kept coming.

The Maine Troop Greeters were formally incorporated as a nonprofit in 2008. Today more than 300 people are registered as volunteers, with a core group who show up week after week.

Still Waiting at the Gate

The group has now welcomed more than a million troops across thousands of flights, and the Bangor airport still calls ahead whenever one is on approach.

The uniforms have changed, and so have the wars. The greeters haven't. Whatever time a flight lands in Bangor, someone is already on their way to meet it.