Jeff Sawyer said he feels a lot of pride about performing August 8 at a swing dance for Wings Over Wiscasset at the Wiscasset Municipal Airport. Wings honors veterans, as it did in its 2013 debut.

Sawyer, of Londonderry, N.H., served on active duty in the U.S. Air Force from 1980 to 1988, until just before the U.S. entered the first war in Iraq.

His father David Sawyer served as a B-29 bomber radio operator during World War II.

“I just always think it’s important to bring attention to what servicepeople and their families sacrificed,” Sawyer said.

The event’s activities will put a spotlight on the contributions of veterans, with an emphasis on World War II veterans, Wings executive producer Dennis St. Pierre has said. Plans call for a reenactment of a WWII encampment; and for area WWII veterans to share their stories.

“I think it’s very timely and well-deserved,” Sawyer said about the event’s focus.

He plays trumpet for Compaq Big Band, the New England band set to perform at the Wings dance. The Friday night, August 8, dance is a fundraiser for Wings.

The Wiscasset appearance is a little farther north than the band would typically travel, but its director Al Soloky said St. Pierre is a good organizer and was promoting an event that will teach children and families about the greatest generation. “So it really didn’t take long to convince me it was worth it to ask everybody to go to Maine on a Friday night,” Soloky said.

He was looking forward to the chance to play for WWII veterans, while that’s still possible. “There are not going to be too many more opportunities to do something like that for the people who were actually there. Then we’ll be playing for people whose grandfathers were there.”

Big band’s golden age was in the 1930s and 1940s, when Tommy Dorsey and others were the Justin Biebers of their day, Soloky said. At one past Compaq performance, a World War veteran stopped and stood in front of the band. “He just stood (there) for the longest time, and you could tell that he had seen the real thing,” Soloky said.

At the Wings swing dance, the band will be performing 1930s and 1940s arrangements and some more modern arrangements  of old tunes, Soloky said. “But it will all be recognizable as big band classics.”