Tuskegee legends share memories at convention

Tuskegee legends share memories at convention
Angela Cara Pancrazio
The Arizona Republic
Aug. 3, 2006 12:00 AM
Each year, the Tuskegee Airmen’s Lonely Eagle ceremony seems a little more lonesome.

When the lights are dimmed and the candles lighted, there are fewer airmen listening to the small brass bell tolling once for each comrade who has died since the last convention.

Last year the bell tolled 47 times. This year it was 53.
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Still, those who could traveled from around the country to the group’s annual convention this week in the Valley.

They came wearing their bright ball caps embroidered with the airplanes they flew and the words “Tuskegee Airmen.” They leaned on canes and scooted about in their motorized wheelchairs. They sported Tuskegee Airmen T-shirts emblazoned with “Who said Black men couldn’t fly?”

They came with their eyes clouded with cataracts, but they could still recognize one another from when they were young pilots 60 years ago.

Despite segregation and degradation, the Tuskegee Airmen carved out a place in history as the country’s first African-American combat pilots.

They yearned to become fighter pilots, ready to fight and die for their country like their White counterparts, but the racist attitudes of the time nearly kept them grounded - including a 1925 U.S. War Department report that claimed Blacks were inferior. The report said Blacks lacked the courage for battle, that they were unreliable under fire and incapable of mastering the skills needed to operate equipment in combat.

Then, in the 1940s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created a pilot-training program for young Black men, separate from White pilots.

From 1942 to 1946, the unit trained at Tuskegee Army Field in Tuskegee, Ala., and graduated nearly 1,000 pilots. More than 15,000 African-Americans, flight navigators, mechanics and support personnel were part of the whole Tuskegee experience.

During World War II, the Tuskegee Airmen produced some of the military’s most outstanding accomplishments while escorting White bomber pilots into combat in Europe, the Mediterranean and North Africa.

The airmen never lost an American bomber to enemy fighters, a record that remains unmatched.

They say, together, they fought two battles, the one overseas and the one at home against racism.

“It was never our thought to go down in history,” said Bob Ashby, one of the original Tuskegee Airmen.

“People think the civil rights movement started in the 1960s. It really didn’t, and it came about when we were doing the fighting,” said Ashby, 81, who lives in Sun City West. “We were fighting for the right to fly.”

George Taylor, 86, of Chicago, still seems mesmerized as he recalled the very first time he sat in an airplane.

It was 1929 or ‘30, the golden era of flight. He was about 10.

“That’s where I first got the idea that I wanted to fly.”

Most of the airmen are in their mid-80s, a few are in their early 90s, and their annual convention is more of a reunion.

As they vanish, their families keep up the bond and their legacy.

Two sisters from Philadelphia, Nancy Leftenant-Colon, 85, and Joan Leftenant Jackson, 74, make it to every convention.

Leftenant-Jackson can click off the day her older brother was shot down over Austria.

“April 12, 1945,” said Jackson, who was still in high school.

“That was a heartbreaker.”

Her brother, Samuel Gordon Leftenant, disappeared after his third bombing mission. He was 19.

“His classmates always kept a relationship with my family after my brother was killed. That whole crew was a different breed,” she said.

“They were pioneers. They had something unheard of to prove: that Blacks could fly.

“There was some crazy rumor that the altitude could kill them.”

But they proved to be unstoppable. And proud. Their pride paints the grainy black-and-white photographs of the airmen in their flight suits posing by their airplanes on display at the convention.

Her brother, Jackson said as she tapped her heart, “He’s here.”

For years, those trained at Tuskegee never really talked about their experiences. Over the past decade as some of the airmen publish their own books and as a recently made documentary is released, there is increased visibility.

Recently, President Bush signed legislation to honor each Tuskegee Airman with the Congressional Gold Medal for heroism. The medals will be awarded later this year.

Tuskegee Airmen Inc., which sponsors the convention, reports that there are more airmen out there, but they can count only those who belong to the organization, which has local chapters in cities throughout the country, including the Valley’s Archer-Ragsdale chapter.

This week, their convention is at JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort but they’ve cut a swath across the Valley from flying with young aviators near Sky Harbor to attending a dedication of a memorial air park in their name at Luke Air Force Base.

Nate L. Carr, 59, of Gilbert, came to the convention to honor his father.

Growing up, Carr, never knew that his dad had been one of the World War II airmen.

Carr didn’t start hearing the stories until he was in the Air Force, until he started landing planes on bases where his father never could when he trained at Tuskegee.

Because of his skin color.

He’d say, with a big tear in his eye, ‘I couldn’t land there.’ ”

His father died last year.

“One of his favorite sayings was, ‘My ceiling is your floor.’ “