He was a member of an Army honor guard that played a key role in the funerals of soldiers. He was one of the men who carried the flag-draped caskets and fired the rifle salute at the conclusion of a funeral.

The vast majority of the funerals he worked at were not for veterans of World War I, World War II or the Korean War. Those funerals were for young men his own age who were killed in Vietnam.

He acknowledged that working at the funerals of so many young people could be depressing.

“You just get a mindset that this is something you have to do and do it well,” he said.

Fort is a native of Humboldt and a graduate of Humboldt High School.

He was working at Gunder Church Furniture in Dakota City when he was drafted in 1966 at age 19.

He was sent to Fort Bliss, Texas, for basic training. Over the course of six weeks there, he learned shooting and hand-to-hand combat. Also, he regularly ran a mile with a full pack on his back.

Fort doesn’t know why he was selected for honor guard duty.

“They came down the line one day and asked if I would be on the honor guard and I said yes,” he said. “And after a while they came back and said I was on the team.”

He was sent to Fort Benjamin Harrison near Indianapolis, Indiana. There, he completed more training on the formalities of Army funerals. He was then assigned to the 5th Army Honor Guard.

That unit worked at Army funerals in Indiana, Ohio, Illinois and Michigan.

“We traveled quite a ways,” Fort said.

He said he does not know how many funerals he worked at.

He was discharged from the Army in 1968. He returned to Humboldt and went back to work at Gunder Church Furniture. He retired from that company in 2009.

In 2011, he traveled to Washington, D.C., aboard the Brushy Creek Area Honor Flight.

He was so moved by that experience that he agreed to join the local Honor Flight board when he was given a chance to do so. As a board member, he helped organize multiple flights and traveled on seven of them.

He said that getting the Vietnam War veterans to The Wall, as the black stone monument to that war is sometimes called, was one of the most rewarding aspects of working on the Honor Flights.