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Tuskegee Airman Reflects on Time in Service
By Staff Sgt. Regina Edwards, 19th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
(This feature is part of the “Through Airmen’s Eyes” series. These stories focus on individual Airmen, highlighting their Air Force story.)
Tuskegee aircrew was one of his best memories. (U.S. Air Force illustration/Staff. Sgt. Regina Edwards)“I’ve come a long way from picking cotton in the fields with my grandfather,” said retired Master Sgt. Leroy Mazell Smith, who has lived a life few could probably imagine.
He was born on an Arkansas bridge during the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927; son of a logger and farmer, Smith grew up in Pine Bluff, Ark. His mother, who cared for him and his two siblings, left school at the age of 13.
He credits his upbringing to his grandfather whom Smith picked cotton with. He said his grandfather taught him the value of hard work and perseverance.
Smith graduated from high school in Fordyce, Ark., at the age of 16. While there, he attended preflight aeronautical classes, changing the course of his future.
Tuskegee Airman Reflects on Diversity
By Airman Jenna K. Caldwell, 22nd Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs
(This feature is part of the “Through Airmen’s Eyes” series. These stories focus on individual Airmen, highlighting their Air Force story.)
Retired Maj. George BoydIt was 1944, and the U.S. was in the midst of two battles – a war on two sides of the world and the onslaught of cultural changes on the home front.
Meanwhile, a young African-American Soldier picked up trash on the white sandy beaches at Keesler Field, Miss. He had been briefed that although he was in the service and evidently may fight and die for his country, he could neither walk on this beach unless he was working nor could he swim here because it was for whites only.
Now retired Maj. George Boyd, a 28-year combat veteran and Tuskegee Airman, will never forget the hypocrisy of that order. Boyd, now a resident of Wichita, Kan., was part of the service during the transition from the Army Air Corps to the Air Force.
Boyd served in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. He witnessed the roots of social equality shift within his country and his service – from the integration of the armed forces by President Harry S. Truman in 1948, to the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s.