WWII Veteran Russell Taylor Returns To Normandy With Wife To Renew Wedding Vows (VIDEO)

Wish Of A Lifetime! WWII Vet Returns To Normandy With Wife To Renew Wedding Vows

A 94-year-old World War II veteran has fulfilled a longtime dream to return to France to renew his wedding vows, NBC News reports.

The couple renewed their "I dos" at a church in Normandy. Russell also got the opportunity to place flowers on the graves of friends he lost storming Normandy's Utah Beach 68 years ago, Dayton Daily News reports.

“It was very emotional, hard to put into words,” Odile told the news outlet.

Russell and Odile Taylor married on September 15, 1945, at the end of World War II.

Russell had been a member of the Army Signal Corps and had met Odile in Paris, where she had been working as an interpreter. The couple now has seven great-grandchildren, Dayton Daily News reports.

"Odile took the sunshine wherever she went," he told PR Newswire. "She has always been happy. That's why I married her."

When asked what he would do if he could do anything in the world, Russell told NBC that he wanted to renew his vows to his wife in the place that brought them together.

Unfortunately, it was a trip they could not afford.

But thanks to Brookdale Senior Living and Jeremy Bloom's Wish of a Lifetime foundation, the Taylors got to fulfill that longtime dream.

Wish of a Lifetime grants wishes to seniors ages 65 and older. Bloom, a former Olympic skier and football player for the Philadelphia Eagles and the Pittsburgh Steelers, founded the nonprofit in 2008.

He told HuffPost he started the foundation out of admiration for his grandparents and to say a proper thank you to a generation that is often forgotten.

"I just thought, we put so much focus on other areas, a lot of focus on youth, which is not a bad thing. But I don't think we say thank you enough -- to the 80, 90, 100 year olds. They have great wisdom, they've been around the block a couple of times," Bloom told HuffPost last year.

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