Today’s Washington Post has this article about the final convention of the Tuskegee Airmen.
At 84, his joints stiff with arthritis, Lt. Col. Hiram Mann had to be lifted gingerly into the cockpit of the World War II-era plane. But as the PT-17 Stearman flew into the hot Florida sky, Mann flashed a grin and a thumbs-up sign and went back to his days training in a plane like this at Tuskegee.
“The pilot asked me if I wanted to take the controls and fly the plane,” Mann said afterward. “I joked that I didn’t want to kill him or myself. So I just sat back and enjoyed the flight.”
The Tuskegee Airmen pride themselves on never having lost a bomber they escorted in World War II. But the black aviators and support personnel, who overcame prejudice at home and German fighters abroad, are succumbing to old age and illness, with more than 50 members dying in the past year. Fewer than 200 of the 992 aviators remain.
So it was that the group declared that last week’s annual convention would be its last. It will join with another, younger group of black pilots for future gatherings.
(…..)
“These men fought for their country but were denied permission to eat in the same dining hall where German prisoners of war could eat,” Coleman said. “They put their lives on the line but were denied the basic right to drink from a water fountain. They sacrificed, and the country owes them a tremendous debt.”
A tremendous debt indeed. Yet more of the Greatest Generation is disappearing before our very eyes. Hopefully, we will never forget the sacrifices they made.
Read the whole thing.
