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Michael McLeod
Ok here you go Mark. On comparing republicans past to republicans present. You saw what kind of guy the most recent republican prez passed out a medal to, right?
Seems to me this republican prez of the past had different priorities.
This is a rough draft of my next column. It involves a different prez, a different time, and a different definition of heroism..
I think you'll enjoy it.
There’s a statue of a World War II hero on the west side of Winter Park. As war memorials go, it’s something of an understatement: just a life-size statue, standing by the front door of the Hannibal Square Heritage Center on New England Avenue, of a man in a red blazer.
You’d have to have to ask somebody what that blazer stood for to understand the battles, fought and won, that it represents. Maybe it’s better that way.
The statue is of Chief Master Sergeant Richard Hall Jr., who was raised in Winter Park and retired to the area after a lengthy military career. He died in January at the age of 97 as one of the last surviving members of the 332nd Fighter Group: the legendary Tuskeegee Airmen, also known as the Red Tails – the country’s first African-American military aviators.
In the early part of the 20th century, Blacks were banned from serving as pilots in the military under the blatantly racist premise that they were not intelligent enough. As World War II neared, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the enlistment of Black airmen. His wife, Eleanor, took on the cause, famously traveling to their training base in Tuskeegee, Alabama to don a set of goggles and – to the astonishment of her bodyguards – fly as a passenger with one of the airmen.
“Red Tails” would become the nickname of both the aviators and the nimble P-31 and P-51 Mustangs they flew after they painted the tails of the planes red to distinguish themselves from other fighter groups. They saw action in Europe, strafing enemy targets and protecting U.S. bombers during long-distance air raids.
Later, in the post-war years, the red blazers the Tuskeegee veterans began wearing to reunions became a symbol of their courage in another arena: confronting racism, both during their training in the deep South and upon their return. In one much-publicized post-war incident, a small group of Red Tail pilots stormed into an officer’s club they were still banned from because of their race. The public reaction helped to accelerate the early Civil Rights movement.
Sergeant Hall, who served as a member of the ground crews that kept the Red Tails airborne, continued his Air Force career through three decades and two more wars, in Korea and Vietnam, retiring in 1973.
He was included in a compilation of oral histories and photographs of West Winter Park senior citizens called the Sage Project, developed by Peter Schreyer, executive director of Crealde School of Art. Born September 25, 1923 in Brooks County, Georgia, Hall moved with his family as an infant to Winter Park, growing up in a three room shotgun home on Swoope Avenue built by his father, and being baptized in the church pool at Mount Moriah Baptist Church.
Three years ago, as part of a story I was writing about the Heritage Center and the Sage Project, I visited with Hall in his home. When I asked him for his feelings about the racism that he’d been subjected to, he quickly changed the subject, seemingly more interested in leading me on a tour of his home, which was filled with black and white photos from his Red Tail days, to point out favorite comrades.
Recently, remembering his reticence and knowing she was close to him, I asked Barbara Chandler, the manager of the Heritage Center, if she could explain it.
“Even when you are seen as a hero, sometimes you don’t want to relive it,” she said. “What you experienced was his humility and his genuine love for people and the country that he served. Those are the good stories he told you, not the bad. Those are the things he wanted to make sure everyone would remember.”
Surely, then, he’d want us to remember this:
On March 29, 2007, at an emotional gathering in Washington, D.C., President George Bush awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to the more than 300 surviving Tuskeegee Airmen present, delivering a salute to them from the stage, saying: “For all the unreturned salutes and unforgiveable indignities, I salute you for your service to the United States of America.”
“I sat right up front,” Hall had told me. “I got to shake the president’s hand twice – once when he came in, and once when he left. It was a real honor.”
As I see it, Master Sergeant Hall, the honor was his.
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