Blackwell-Frazier American Legion Post #142 Hominy, Oklahoma

This week’s article is special on so many levels. First, because when I was serving, I had the opportunity, while on orders, to visit the Tuskegee Airman Museum in Alabama. Wow, it was amazing. If you never saw the movie “Tuskegee Airmen” I highly recommend it. So, I am there and as a hobby of skydiving, talk a young Tuskegee Airman (local pilot school there) to take me up for a jump. It’s in my jump log book, Tuskegee Airman. It is one of my most treasured skydives.

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I enjoy a great friendship with a Pawnee, soldier, and brother. Joe Hawkins earned two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star for his actions in combat. He is also one of the star players in the movie “Playground of the Native Son”. That movie tells the story of the 1927 Semi-Pro football team of indigenous men who defeated the, then world champions, New York Giants. By the way, we are playing that movie November 11th at the Hominy Community Center. We will be raffling tickets for a beautiful Native “Village” Quilt (Thanks Juanita!).

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I grew up many years in Long Beach California. That was a busy Navy town during the Vietnam War times. In the apartment complexes my folks had us in housed many Navy families. Navy families carried heavy burdens as, usually, Dad shipped out to sea for six months or more at a time and the Mom’s and kids struggled to get along. While many other branches had that same burden, some families could be at home station in Europe and other places.

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Do you have a favorite movie genre? Being a guy, I like the military ones most. Gee, being an old lifer that should be no surprise. One of my favorite movies of all time was Sargent York. Played by Gary Cooper, it captured the conflict of faith and war. It really made an impact on this young mind.

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Many great folks have come from Oklahoma. On this day in 2004 Gordon “Gordo” Cooper, one of the original Mercury astronauts who pioneered human space exploration, died. He was 77. One of the original seven Mercury astronauts, Cooper piloted the final flight of the Mercury program, the United States’ first manned spaceflight program.
An Oklahoman, Cooper was born March 6, 1927, in Shawnee. Cooper was a World War II veteran. He joined the Marines and transferred to the Air Force in 1949. He earned a bachelor of science degree in aeronautical engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology in 1956 and served as a test pilot in the Flight Test Division at Edwards Air Force Base. Cooper was selected as a Mercury astronaut in April 1959. On May 15, 1963, Cooper piloted the “Faith 7” spacecraft on a 22-orbit mission that lasted 34 hours and 20 minutes.
In 1965 he served as command pilot of the Gemini 5 mission. He and Charles Conrad established a new space endurance record by traveling more than 3.3 million miles in an elapsed time of 190 hours, 56 minutes, and proved that humans could survive in a weightless state for the length of a trip to the moon. It also tested a new power source for future flights – fuel cells. During a 1995 reunion of surviving Mercury astronauts, Cooper was asked who was the greatest fighter pilot he ever saw, Cooper answered, “You’re looking at him!”

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