This time Brookshire's Food and Pharmacy and subsidiary Super 1 Foods picked up the tab for Tooley, his brother, 92-year-old Ed Tooley of Shreveport, and more than 20 other men in their 80s and 90s -- all World War II veterans.
Brookshire's instituted the program in 2010 and have since taken dozens of veterans to the country's capital to visit various war memorials.
Fel Tooley found out about the program through his brother, who called him one day and asked if he'd like to make the trip. The answer was a resounding yes, and the brothers each filled out their applications.
Fel Tooley -- the youngest veteran on this trip -- was drafted just at the end of World War II. He served in the Navy from 1944 to 1945 in the hospital corps. His career was spent stationed in California. Ed Tooley was a colonel in the Air Force and stationed mainly in Burma during the war.
"The trip was outstanding," Fel Tooley said. "It would take me an hour just to explain all the things we did."
The veterans were treated like royalty from the moment their escorts -- representatives of Super 1 Foods and Brookshire's -- arrived. Causal meals, fine dining and even a 1950s-themed dinner service complete with dancers in zoot suits, thanks to the Arlington, Va., Knights of Columbus.
But the real reason for this trip and the others like it is to provide these service men and women (though no women were on the latest trip) with the opportunity to see the National World War II Memorial erected in Washington, D.C., in 2008. Other programs of this kind exist, and Brookshire's public relations manager, Sam Anderson of Tyler, Texas, where the grocery store is headquartered, said his company takes special care to select veterans who have never before seen the World War II memorial.
"It's a way to say to these veterans thank you very much for your service," Anderson said. "What I've seen on these trips is an awful amount of gratitude expressed to these veterans as they go around to different sites in D.C. It is not uncommon for people to stop them on the street and express their gratitude for the veterans' service to this country. There is still a feeling of patriotism in this country."
Once in Washington, D.C., the veterans were divided into smaller groups and provided with T-shirts, hats, jackets and wheelchairs before touring monuments and memorials.
When the groups reached the World War II Memorial, the emotions took hold.
"When we got to the memorial, they had chairs set out for us, and we had lunch right there," Fel Tooley said. "It was very moving for all of them. We were all from different branches -- there were Marines from Iwo Jima there -- they were from all over. The 'Wall of Stars' gets you more than anything."
That wall, officially titled the Freedom Wall, has 4,048 gold stars, each representing 100 Americans who died in the war.
Once home, each veteran received a packet containing photographs taken on the trip, as well as 30 or 40 letters from school children thanking the men for their service.
"If you read them, you'd just laugh and cry," Fel Tooley said.
Still, there's more to look forward to for the latest group of veterans. On Dec. 6, the group will reunite in Shreveport for a dinner hosted by Brookshire's.
"The veterans have been very, very grateful for this experience," Anderson said. "They are honored that we have provided this for them, when in reality it is actually we who are honored to do this for them."
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