People doing good: The pilots for wounded veterans

Nobody blunders public relations like the Transportation Security Administration and some of the nation’s airlines

Jack Zimmerman, who has to wear a splint from his wrist to elbow, was forced to leave it behind at airport security recently, while on his way to a week-long elk hunt in Wyoming, his wife reports. He had two pieces of luggage — one just for medications — that the airline lost. He had to scoot on his bottom down the aisle because a wheelchair the airline provided didn’t allow him to fit past the first row of seats.

He was traveling alone and his wife wasn’t allowed through security to help.

Jack Zimmerman was blown up earlier this year when he stepped over an IED in Afghanistan, while serving a 12-month deployment with the 101st Airborne.

His wife wrote of his commercial flying ordeal in a letter to the Veterans Airlift Command, private pilots who fly veterans and their families so they won’t have to endure the nonsense of flying the nation’s airlines.

Here’s an interview with Walt Fricke, the Golden Valley executive who started the organization: