Hutchinson ? Arland Richards answered his nation’s call in World War II, fighting in the same unit as the father of a future first lady. Now, the 83-year-old Hutchinson man has been called again, to spend part of Veterans Day with President Bush and his wife, Laura.

Richards was invited to breakfast today at the White House, along with his surviving comrades in the 555th Anti-Aircraft Unit, attached to the 104th Infantry.

The battalion was chosen for the honor because Mrs. Bush’s father, the late Harold Welch, also was assigned to the company as a master sergeant in Headquarters Battery.

“I’m happy, but there’s some sadness to it,” Richards said. Of the 180 men in his C Battery, about half have died.

Richards was drafted at age 19 and landed in France in late September 1944, serving as an artillery observer as his unit moved through Belgium, Holland and Germany.

Mrs. Bush’s executive secretary called Richards about three months ago as a prelude to the formal engraved invitation that came in the mail two weeks ago.

“I told her at first I didn’t think I could make it,” he said. His wife, Marge, passed away six years ago, and he wasn’t enthusiastic about traveling alone, he said. He knew that neither his daughter in Florida nor his son, a missionary in New Guinea, would be able to accompany him.

But his nephew, Ken McClelland, of Hutchinson, urged him to accept.

“He was a little hesitant, not comfortable traveling with the changes in security,” McClelland said. “Between his coffee-drinking buddies at McDonald’s and my wife and I, we talked him into it.”

McClelland volunteered to make the trip with Richards. He had expected to pass the time during the breakfast by sightseeing in the nation’s capital, but the invitation included a guest ticket.

After the breakfast, the group will tour the White House and board an excursion bus to Arlington Cemetery and other Washington landmarks.

Richards remembers Welch, although they weren’t buddies, and he was taking along an enlargement of a snapshot of himself with several other soldiers, one of whom he thinks is Mrs. Bush’s father.