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2nd Victory A Dream Come True

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By STEVE OTTO

sotto@tampatrib.com

Published: January 25, 2009

As the inaugural hoopla rolled on the tube, I heard a commentator mention that among the millions gathered in Washington were several members of the Tuskegee Airmen.

Immediately I thought of Col. Herbert (Gene) Carter. Our families had become friends when he served in the Air Force in Germany with my dad. I wondered if he was out there in the cold with what you could truly call the huddled masses.

I called his home, which is an old brick house within walking distance of the great Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. The last time we had been in Alabama he and his wife, Mildred, had taken us on a tour of the college where he was an associate dean, showing us with pride the many buildings that had been built with labor from the students.

"No," he said, "We didn't think it would be a good idea to be in that cold," adding that his wife had broken her arm and they figured it would be better to watch it from Alabama on the tube than face the millions.

The Old South

Carter is a Tuskegee Airman. His story, as well as Mildred Carter's, is part of our shared story of the American Dream.
Herbert Carter was born Sept. 27, 1919, in Amory, Miss. Take that in for a second and imagine what it your expectations might be if you were black and born in rural Mississippi in 1919. He stayed through the ninth grade when he figured if he was going to be any more than a laborer he had better move on. He went to Tuskegee to live with his older brother and upon graduating from high school enrolled in the institute hoping somehow to become a veterinarian. As the only veterinary school in the state was down the road at Auburn University, which did not admit blacks, he began thinking about other options.

The answer came when the Army, despite having its own report saying blacks would be unable to handle the technical skills of flying, decided to put together an all-black flying squadron that would be trained at Tuskegee.

The rest, of course, is history. The Tuskegee Airmen became legends for their performances, particularly flying cover for bombers in the Mediterranean Theater of operations. Carter, although assigned as chief engineering officer, still flew 77 combat missions.

Another Dream

When the war was over, Carter and his fellow airmen returned to a country that still was segregated, and where those freedoms he had fought to defend still were denied to him. Mildred had tried to join the aptly named WASPS, but her color kept her away.

"I think in those years I had two dreams," Carter says. "One was winning the war and the other was coming home to an America with equal rights and opportunities, and a level playing field not just for ourselves but more importantly our children.

"In our wildest thoughts we might have thought that one day one of them might be elected to office, maybe even Congress. But never that 60 years later, that more and more all of America's citizens are gaining an opportunity for themselves based on their talents. I felt as I was watching the inauguration that that dream had finally been fulfilled."

Keyword: Otto Graphs, for more of Steve Otto's musings.

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