Four 100-year-old WWII veterans were honored at the coin toss of Super Bowl LIV.
“By honoring these four veterans at the championship game, the league is preserving the national memory of the Greatest Generation and World War II,’’ said Holly Rotondi, executive director of the Friends of the National World War II Memorial.
The men honored were Charles McGee, Odon Cardenas, Samuel Lombardo and Sidney Walton.
According to Fox News, McGee flew 136 combat missions in WWII, attacking targets in Italy and helping support and rescue 1,000 prisoners of war in Romania. He was a member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen and later flew in Korea and Vietnam as well.
Cardenas was part of the General George Patton’s Third Army, fighting on the ground in France and Germany. He was briefly a POW in Germany.
Lombardo fought in the Battle of the Bulge and other major battles in the final months of the war as a rifle platoon leader.
Finally, Walton fought in China, Burma and India and enlisted specifically to take down Adolf Hitler.
The celebration was for their military heritage and the NFL’s 100th year.
“It was quite a thrill to be asked,’’ McGee said. “I couldn’t say no.’’