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Harold Brown … There By Request … Again
Sojourner’s Truth Staff
There is clearly a lot of
skepticism among Americans in general and African Americans
in particular about the benefit of taking one of the
COVID-19 vaccines currently on the market. Harold Brown,
PhD, harbors no such concerns.
“All we have to do is to
look at the numbers, with 400-plus thousand people dying
over the last year, I certainly don’t need any more
motivation than that,” said the 96-year old Tuskegee Airman
after he received his injection at Magruder Hospital in Port
Clinton last week.
“If you want to stick
around and see your next birthday, go down and get yourself
vaccinated,” he added.
This pandemic is not
Brown’s first encounter with danger.
In 1942, at the age of 17,
the Minneapolis native volunteered for the Army Aircorps in
order to become an airman and join his fellow Americans in
their momentous struggle against the fascist powers. He was
one of 15 new pilots to join the 332nd Fighter
Group – part of the Tuskegee Airman and found his way to the
European theater of war to fly P-51 Mustang fighters.
His brush with danger
increased when, in March 1945, on his 39th
mission, he was shot down over Germany.
With luck, he fell into
the hands of the German military before the German civilians
on the ground found him – given the devastation Allied
bombing was causing, civilians were a bit less than
hospitable to downed enemy flight crews. Brown spent several
months in a POW camp before being liberated by General
George Patton’s 3rd Army.
The exploits and bravery
of the Tuskegee Airmen remained unknown to most Americans
for decades and not until 2007 were the veterans invited to
the White House so that President George W. Bush could
bestow the Congressional Medal of Honor upon those still
alive.
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