Walt Miller sat silently in his wheelchair in front of the high white marble sarcophagus of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery.

The tomb rests atop a hill across the Potomac River from the capital city. No sound from the city disturbed the silence of the stone-paved plaza, a silence kept by hundreds who had come to pay their respects.

They were arrayed in ranks with Miller — a 97-year-old retiree from Waterloo, Iowa, Local 288 — at the still center, next to one of the sentinels who constantly guard the tomb.

Miller was chosen to lay a wreath during the 4 p.m. changing of the guard Oct. 8, an honor reserved for him as the only veteran of the World War II era among a group of more than 100 veterans flown to Washington by Eastern Iowa Honor Flight. It's part of a national network of groups that gather veterans to visit the granite and marble memorials that stand as a permanent testament to the honor of U.S. troops.

It was Miller's first real visit to Washington.

"I think it's an honor being a veteran to be able to come to see the memorials and pay respects to all the people who went before you and fought the battle for you. A lot of people never had the opportunity, and this is one way we can honor them," he said.

More than 16.4 million Americans served during World War II. Less than 0.5% of them are still alive, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

At one time, the IBEW had in its ranks tens of thousands of World War II veterans and others who served in the 1940s. Miller is one of the last.

"Walt's generation transformed the IBEW into what it is today," said Pension and Reciprocity Director Ryan O'Leary, a former business manager of Local 288. "Our vets were exemplary about brotherhood. No one had to explain it to them."

More than 70 years ago, Brother Miller deployed to Hickham Field at the entrance to Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii. In 1941, Hickham had been strafed and bombed by the Imperial Japanese Navy.

The war was over by the time Miller arrived at Hickham in 1946, but the battle for the peace was just beginning.

Miller spent three years in Hawaii as part of the 29th Statistical Control Unit. The SCUs were responsible for the use and maintenance of one of the most advanced pieces of logistical and strategic hardware in the U.S. Military, IBM Electric Accounting Machines.

The SCUs kept track of the entire inventory of the vast Pacific military machine. Everything from bombing results and casualties to supply location and troop deployments was translated onto cardboard punch cards, run through the machines and sent to the Pentagon. Quickly and accurately tracking millions of troops and all the equipment that supported them was an advantage that first the Axis and later communist powers simply could not match.

Miller was given the assignment because of a high school job in Waterloo repairing typewriters and adding machines.

"Rumor has it that when we first shipped out, I was supposed to go to Okinawa, but the ship broke down. Some of us shipped off, and some of us [didn't]," he said. "I worked in IBM equipment maintenance."

Miller was discharged in 1949 and joined the millions of veterans eager to form a life built around family, home and honorable work.

"They gave us a discharge, and I went back home to do whatever work I could find. I worked several different occupations at John Deere Tractor Company," he said.

But you can't live a normal life when you work the third shift overnight, he said.

He found what he was looking for when he joined the Local 288 apprenticeship less than a year later.

"I think mostly you join the union to have somebody to speak for you," he said. "Because you can't fight these things alone [when you] try to get better benefits and better working conditions."

By the early 1960s, times were hard in Waterloo, and Miller hit the road, finding a new home for a while at Santa Barbara, Calif., Local 413. He worked on Vandenberg Air Force Base, at Diablo Canyon Power Plant and out in the Southern California oilfields before returning home.

"Anything you wanted to go to class on and learn more, you could go through and learn how to do that stuff. It was a very interesting career. I wouldn't trade it for anything," Miller said.

He retired in 1992, five years before O'Leary came on as an apprentice, but Miller and the World War II generation were still a huge presence in the local, O'Leary said. They first met at one of Miller's passion projects, maintaining and expanding a huge Boy Scout camp. Twice a year, crews of about 20 volunteers, mostly retirees and apprentices, gathered for a few days' work.

"He set everything up, organized it and took the lead," O'Leary said. "It was special because, you know, I was just a kid. I had no idea I would be the business manager. I think about all those old guys who have passed. … It was an honor that I got to meet all those guys and see what a union really is."

And now there's just Miller.

Miller still comes to the retiree group on the third Thursday of the month, but there aren't many familiar faces. Even the children of the people he worked with are starting to pass on.

"It's a whole changing of the guard," he said. "I hardly know anybody in the local anymore because everybody's new and younger. But I try to keep track."