Accompanied by his son, WWII veteran Sidney Walton set out three years ago to meet the governors of all 50 states on what he called the “No Regrets” tour. Walton made it to 40, with the most recent coming just days before he died.
Sidney Walton, an Army infantryman who enlisted nine months before the attack on Pearl Harbor and in his final years embarked on a cross-country tour to raise awareness of the shrinking number of World War II veterans, died Saturday in Santa Monica at age 102.
“My dad was a patriot,” Paul said. “He joined the Army specifically to fight Hitler. He didn’t have to. No one drafted him.”Born Feb. 11, 1919, Walton lived a full life but there were times he thought back on a missed opportunity: He passed on a chance in 1939 to meet a group of aging Civil War veterans who gathered at the World’s Fair in his hometown of New York City.
“I said, ‘How would you like to go on tour across the country, meet every governor in every state and meet people along the way and give each and every one of them an opportunity to meet a World War II veteran before it’s too late?’” Paul recalled. “He said, ‘Son, I’m up for that.’”was born. Within two months, Walton had met the first governor on the tour — Rhode Island’s Gina Raimondo.
“This was not just to reward my father for his brave service that a lot of World War II veterans never received,” Paul said. “But this is to remind all Americans of the service and the sacrifices they made so we can all be here to enjoy our freedoms.”The elder Walton visited the Oval Office in April 2019 with then-President Donald Trump, who invited the veteran to attend the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion in Normandy, France.