Airman

Black History Month came alive for students at Columbia's Swansfield Elementary School yesterday with an interactive look black accomplishments -- from inventions and military feats to music and baseball.A retired Negro League baseball player described the days of segregated sports. A former Tuskegee Airman recounted dogfights against the Germans. A storyteller delighted youngsters with a tale about a 5-year-old Tanzanian girl. And parents gave pupils a tour of African and African-American history through displays in the hallways of the school on Cedar Lane.

Hank and Betty Tillman will sit side by side as always tonight at the Grasonville VFW hall when Hank is honored for 31 years of distinguished military service through three wars.They'll hold hands. They'll listen to the old songs of love and longing and partings that the World War II generation still loves: "I'll be seeing you, in all the old familiar places that this heart of mine embraces . . ."Like so many young couples of that era, World War II shaped their lives. Hank and Betty were sweethearts when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor; husband and wife before it was over.

"President Clinton can't tell me he knows how I feel," Shirley Hilton says. "He doesn't know how I feel. He can't." But anyone, the president on down, might get a better idea how Shirley Hilton feels by reading the report on the search for the remains of her husband, Airman 1st Class Robert L. Hilton. It just arrived from Hawaii. Not only will this report help you appreciate the pain and frustration of MIA families, it will also cure the tendency to immediately dismiss those paranoid-sounding claims that Vietnam has stifled efforts to resolve the remaining MIA cases.

A Carroll County resident was a behind-the-scenes participant in the Bosnia rescue operation of Air Force Capt. Scott F. O'Grady.David R. Jordan of Linwood is a Navy airman who works with Marine helicopters aboard the USS Kearsarge, the amphibious assault ship that launched the rescue team. The Kearsarge, commissioned in 1993, carries a crew of 1,000 sailors.Airman Jordan, 21, joined the Navy in August and left Norfolk, Va., for duty in the Mediterranean Sea in April.His last letter said he was in the Adriatic," said Janet Long, his mother.

Navy Airman Michael D. Showalter is midway through a six-month deployment in the Adriatic Sea aboard the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga, based in Mayport, Fla., the lead ship in its battle group.The ship is supporting Operations Deny Flight and Provide Promise to enforce United Nations' sanctions in the former Yugoslavia. A goodwill visit also was made to a refugee camp in Slovenia, where Navy personnel painted the camp's buildings and played soccer with residents.Airman Showalter is the son of David E. Showalter and Sally Marker-Showalter of Westminster.

Navy Airman Apprentice Stephen Sweigart, son of Eugene and Kim Sweigart of Woodbine, recently received the Sea Strike Wing "Ace" award for superior performance of duty while assigned to Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron 6 at the Cecil Field, Fla., Naval Air Station.Airman Sweigart is a 1989 graduate of Glenelg High School.

Airman Jackson was a mess hall cook. Oh, he could load, ai and fire a carbine. And if he was sober, he might even have hit someone. But that wasn't really what he was trained to do.Nevertheless, he had to pull night guard duty like everyone else. And like everyone else, he hated it. Especially since the Korean War had ended and he was boozily waiting to be rotated back to the States.So that night he was on a lonely flight line, watching over a row of fighter planes. He didn't know why they needed watching.

They called him "Boogie" Bourg because he loved to dance the Boogie Woogie. He married his high school sweetheart, joined the Air Force, and was stationed in Frankfurt, West Germany, in the late 1950s.With his wife pregnant with their second child, Mr. Bourg signed up for additional missions to earn extra money.He never returned from his first extra flight.On Sept. 2, 1958, a U.S. Air Force transport plane carrying Archie Bourg Jr., 21, of Baton Rouge, La., and 16 other servicemen was shot down by Soviet jet fighters over Soviet Armenia, near the Turkish border.

TOKYO -- A sailor charged with battering a gay shipmate to death entered no plea yesterday during the first hearing in his closely watched court-martial, as the U.S. Navy disclosed that the defendant has said he was fending off an unwelcome sexual advance.The sailor, Airman Apprentice Terry M. Helvey, 20, said he was seeking a civilian lawyer for his criminal court-martial, which appears likely to drag out many of the stereotypes and arguments against permitting homosexuals in the military.

I used to think the Supreme Court spent its time dealing with important matters.I used to think the justices were kept very busy with such things as abortion, the death penalty and civil rights.I used to think they labored under a tremendous workload. As one news account said this week: "The court, returning from its three-month summer recess with a blizzard of paperwork, issued orders in more than 1,400 cases."And you could just close your eyes and see the black-robed justices, buried up to their necks in snowbanks of papers.