Tuskegee Airmen

As Memorial Day month comes to a close, we join the nation in offering a very belated salute to William H. Cornish. Mr. Cornish, 87, served in World War II with the 332nd Fighter Group of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first all-black bomber unit. After the war, the Tuskegee Airmen slipped too quietly back into a segregated society. The unit's extraordinary and valiant record put the lie to deeply ingrained racial segregation, so it had to be forgotten. For decades, the Tuskegee Airmen were at most a footnote in the story of World War II for most Americans.

Braves: Andruw Jones stole a career-high three bases.Cubs: Gary Gaetti's grand slam was his first homer at Turner Field. He has homered in 34 different ballparks. The only parks he hasn't hit homers are in Phoenix and Tampa Bay. Jeff Blauser's homer was his first since last Aug. 14.Marlins: Reliever Vic Darensbourg leads the NL with 24 appearances. Before the game, the team conducted a Salute to Black Legends of American History that included 20 former Negro leagues players as well as groups representing the Tuskegee Airmen, Buffalo Soldiers and Triple Nickel Parachute Infantry.

The National Park Service has begun development of a new park honoring the Tuskegee Airmen, African-American fighter pilots whose role in World War II went unnoticed for years.The new national historic site will be in Moton Field, near Tuskegee, Ala., where the pilots were trained, and it will offer period aircraft and exhibits about the airmen and the role the U.S. military played in the war.The Airmen, nicknamed the "Lonely Eagles," completed 1,578 missions, destroying more than 260 enemy aircraft, sinking an enemy destroyer and dis-mantling many enemy installations.

Alfred L. Woolridge, a former aircraft engineering officer with the all-black Tuskegee Airmen during World War II and later a scientist at the Edgewood Arsenal in Harford County, died Tuesdayof lung failure at University of Maryland Medical Center.Mr. Woolridge, 79, lived in Ashburton, in West Baltimore, for many years and was an inspector for the city's liquor board after his retirement from Edgewood Arsenal in 1974.A native of Blackstone, Va., he enlisted in the Army in 1942 and studied chemical engineering at Purdue University.

Broadus Nathaniel Butler, 75, an alumnus of the Tuskegee Airmen fighter-pilot unit in World War II and longtime educator, died Tuesday at George Washington University Hospital after a brief illness. He lived in Silver Spring.A native of Mobile, Ala., his career as an educator spanned 40 years and included stints as a college administrator, a high-level official in federal education agencies and a researcher.After graduating from Talladega College in 1941, he flew with the black 332nd Fighter Group in Italy during World War II. The Tuskegee Airmen consisted of more than 900 blacks who trained at Alabama's Tuskegee Army Flying School and served before the armed forces were integrated in 1947.

The Maryland Air National Guard will honor World War II's famed Tuskegee Airmen at 3 p.m. Sunday at Martin State Airport, 2701 Eastern Blvd. in Middle River.The Tuskegee Airmen -- members of the all-black 99th and 302nd Squadrons -- compiled a distinguished combat record in more than 1,500 missions over Europe and North Africa.Among veterans of the two squadrons at the tribute will be guest speaker Ira O'Neill, one of the original Tuskegee pilots. O'Neill left the service as a first lieutenant at the war's end. He rejoined later and spent 30 years in the Air Force as a noncommissioned officer before retiring at his officer rank.

HBO has become the symbol for excellence in made-for-television movies. And the premium cable channel delivers another quality drama tonight at 8 in "The Tuskegee Airmen," starring Laurence Fishburne.As a whole, "Tuskegee" is not a great movie. But it is way above average, and it contains scenes that will move you in a way television seldom does.The film, which is based on the real-life experiences of some 440 African-American combat pilots, is about the fighting of two wars by those men. The first is the bloody one the airmen courageously fought in the skies over Europe and northern Africa during World War II. The other one -- the more difficult war, according to the film -- is the one they fought at home to be trained and accepted as men with the right stuff.

Gordon Truman Boyd Jr., a retired U.S. Census Bureau specialist who was a member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen during World War II, died May 5 of heart failure at Anne Arundel Medical Center Hospital. The Arundel-On-The-Bay resident was 78.Mr. Boyd worked 34 years in Washington as a management specialist for the U.S. Commerce Department's Census Bureau and retired in 1979. In 1951, he established the House of Boyd Funeral Home in the nation's capital, operating it until 1970.During World War II, he was inducted into the Army Air Corps and trained as a bombardier and navigator.

* Lewis A. Jackson, 81, who helped train the Tuskegee Airmen, the nation's first black military aviators, died Saturday in Xenia, Ohio. He was 18 when a milkman in his hometown of Angola, Ind., taught him to fly. A year later, he bought a used airplane, then helped pay for his education by flying passengers on barnstorming trips around Indiana. He joined the faculty of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama in 1940, then was an instructor for the Tuskegee Airmen, who flew combat missions over Europe, North Africa and Sicily during World War II. After the war, he became an examiner for the Federal Aviation Administration and developed an aircraft computer that many pilots used in obtaining their licenses.

Out of closets, attics and storerooms came dozens of photos, a few old uniforms and a treasure chest of memories of how black Americans contributed to flight.The photos and memorabilia, gathered by the Maryland Aviation Administration, became part of an exhibit last year that for the first time brought some of the aviation achievements of black Americans together in one place.Today, an expanded version of the same exhibit returns to Linthicum. "African Americans in Aviation: Transcending Time and Space" will be on display for a month at Baltimore-Washington International Airport.

ROBERT SEARCY, 88 Member of the Tuskegee Airmen Robert Searcy, a member of the all-black group of World War II servicemen known as the Tuskegee Airmen, died of colon cancer Sept. 7 at his granddaughter's home in Atlanta. He was 88. Searcy was born in Mount Pleasant, Texas, in 1921, and briefly attended what is now Prairie View A&M University before enlisting in the Army Air Corps in 1942. In an interview this year, he said that after basic training at Fort Hood, Texas, he was selected to lead a group of airmen to Tuskegee Army Airfield in Tuskegee, Ala. Searcy described how porters on the train platform that day told him that his men would be segregated, barred from dining and sleeping quarters.

Gwendolyn Parrish was studying to become a doctor when she met a Baltimore County police lieutenant who was recruiting candidates in her Turners Station neighborhood. At first, she dismissed the idea. But she eventually became drawn to "a calling to do service for my community and make a difference," Parrish said, noting that the relationship between the historically black neighborhood and police was tense in the 1980s. So Parrish left the University of Maryland, Baltimore County after three years to pursue a law enforcement career.

As Memorial Day month comes to a close, we join the nation in offering a very belated salute to William H. Cornish. Mr. Cornish, 87, served in World War II with the 332nd Fighter Group of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first all-black bomber unit. After the war, the Tuskegee Airmen slipped too quietly back into a segregated society. The unit's extraordinary and valiant record put the lie to deeply ingrained racial segregation, so it had to be forgotten. For decades, the Tuskegee Airmen were at most a footnote in the story of World War II for most Americans.

There is no way this nation can properly atone for the shabby and disrespectful way that we treated those World War II heroes known as the Tuskegee Airmen, but at long last we have begun to try. At a ceremony under the Capitol dome last Thursday, Congress took a first step toward righting a wrong by awarding surviving members of the Tuskegee Airmen ... the Congressional Gold Medal. During the ceremony, President Bush added his personal sharp salute to the airmen. He told them, "On behalf of the office I hold, and a country that honors you, I salute you for your service to the United States of America."

WASHINGTON -- The Tuskegee Airmen were called racist and hurtful names as they became the nation's first black military pilots during World War II. Yesterday, they were called heroes. About 300 airmen, widows and relatives sat in the Capitol Rotunda as the Tuskegee Airmen received the Congressional Gold Medal - the nation's highest civilian honor - and a salute from President Bush. The award is recognition of the airmen's role in fighting two wars: one against America's enemies abroad and another against ignorance and racial intolerance at home.

Cyril Byron Sr., 85 (right), who served with the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II, addresses an American government class at Milford Mill Academy. Byron talked yesterday about discrimination he and others faced during the war and afterward. The top photo shows the cap of William Peterson, who worked in aviation logistics. Peterson, who went on to serve with the Marines, also talked to the class.

In Baltimore City Hopkins student found dead; victim of apparent suicide A Johns Hopkins University sophomore was found dead in his dormitory room yesterday after apparently committing suicide, city police said. The body of Dominic Ferrara, a 20-year-old sophomore from Doylestown, Pa., was discovered about midnight in Wolman Hall, according to police. Authorities said there was no sign of foul play. Ferrara is the second Hopkins student to die in the past three weeks. Police are investigating the killing of senior Linda Trinh, who was found in her off-campus apartment Jan. 23. Police have ruled her death a homicide.

It's the Friday night fish fry, and Nanny's boarding house is rocking. Women in brightly colored satin dresses and death-defying stiletto heels shake and grind to the hard-driving boogie-woogie beat. Men in sleek suits and pointy-toed shoes match their partners move for move until it seems as if the walls of the house itself are throbbing in time to the music. The air is electric with sex, and you can almost smell the cologne, sweat and fish frying in crackling grease as the camera follows a smiling, handkerchief-waving, grand-looking middle-aged woman who is making her way across the dance floor and working the room like a politician.

Elsewhere Robert Lewin, 84, a screenwriter who received an Academy Award nomination for the 1956 war movie The Bold and the Brave, died Aug. 28 of lung cancer at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. Born in New York, the Yale graduate was a reporter for the Atlanta Constitution and Life magazine and a partner in a public relations firm before beginning his screenwriting career. The Bold and the Brave, based on his experiences fighting in Italy in World War II, was his first screenplay. The movie starred Mickey Rooney.

From The Tuskegee Airmen (1995), to Miss Evers' Boys (1997), no one has chronicled the African-American experience in made-for-TV movies better than HBO. Something the Lord Made, a new HBO film about a white surgeon and a black lab technician who together pioneered heart surgery in the 1940s at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, continues that tradition with performances that are both forceful and nuanced, driven by a narrative that is as rich in texture as...