Both the Duluth News Tribune (http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/220474/group/homepage/) and the Star Tribune (http://www.startribune.com/local/137757468.html) have articles on the only surviving Tuskegee Airman living in Minnesota, Joe Gomer.
I know Joe Gomer but I haven't seen him for a while. He and his wife attended the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra Concerts and plays at the UMD Theatre. I don't know if they still do because we stopped going to the DSSO concerts and we switched nights for the UMD Theatre. I do know that many people respect them and would greet them at both events.
We tried to help them at the Duluth Airport a few years ago. They arrived on an incoming flight about the same time my wife did. It was a night that taxis were scarce. I had our Prius and couldn't take them and their luggage with us. So, I drove Joe to his house to get one of their cars. Things didn't work out and so I drove him back. They eventually did get a taxi home. I don't know why I didn't take them and then come back for my wife and her luggage. Hindsight is 20/20.
The Duluth News Tribune article contains information about a proposed statue of Joe Gomer to be displayed at the Duluth Airport. I don't know. I kinda think we're too eager to create monuments in stone or words to a long list of people who are heroes to one group or another.
Roger Ebert wrote a review of "Red Tails". He thinks it is entertaining but could have had more about "the atmosphere of the Jim Crow South". He had a statement that disturbed me two ways:
"In Spike Lee's "Miracle at St. Anna" (2008), which has some of that anger, there is a flashback to a scene of black American soldiers in the Deep South being refused service by a restaurant that does accept Nazis from a nearby POW camp."
One disturbing part is that restaurants would serve German prisoners, but not black American soldiers. But it also disturbs me that so many writers call all German military personnel "Nazis". They weren't; in fact, many hated the Nazis. Watch "Das Boot" or read Carol Bly's "Shelter Half".
