OKLAHOMA CITY – The wintry weather has stranded a group of nearly 700 soldiers early Friday morning at Will Rogers World Airport.
“Oklahomans have the biggest heart that I know, and last night was just absolutely amazing, you know, calls and people asking ‘How do we help you,’” said Josh Ryan with Will Rogers World Airport.
Those Oklahomans donated dozens and dozens of meals to the 680 stranded soldiers late Thursday night at Will Rogers World Airport.
“Just like when they leave for holiday block leave to spend the holidays with their families – when they come back, Ft. Sill personnel are here to collect them to get them on buses,” Ryan said.
The group from Ft. Sill landed on Thursday in Oklahoma City, but those buses that were supposed to take them to post couldn’t make it to the airport due to the winter weather.
“Obviously, with the inclement weather, we didn’t want to risk soldiers’ safety sending buses back down to Ft. Sill from here, and so we housed them here overnight,” said Captain John English, who is stationed at Ft. Sill.
When Mayor David Holt, mayor of Oklahoma City, found out about it, he also stepped up by providing the stranded soldiers with breakfast, hundreds of donuts, Friday morning.
“It’s the Oklahoma Standard to make sure that people have a good experience here in Oklahoma City, especially people like our U.S. Army soldiers,” Holt said. “This is not what they expected. They didn’t expect to spend the night sleeping on the floor at WRWA. So, a lot of people have rallied.”
“It’s awesome. We had a couple families bring in some pizza, and Buffalo Wild Wings in the area brought I think 6,000 wings, so a couple helpings for our soldiers,” English said.
Once the roads started clearing up, the buses finally hit the road. They drove the soldiers back to Ft. Sill between 7 a.m. and noon on Friday.