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Wake commissioner to have prime seat
Submitted by ryanteaguebeckwith on 2009-01-16 14:40
Harold H. Webb, chairman of the Wake County Board of Commissioners and a former Tuskegee Airman, will have prime seats at the presidential inauguration next week.
The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies invited those still living among the flyers who trained as part of the famed segregated unit in World War II, Michael Biesecker reports.
After being drafted out of N.C. A&T State University as a freshman, Webb served two years as a mechanic and gunner in the U.S. Army Air Corps before gaining acceptance at Tuskegee. He was training to be a bomber pilot when the Japanese surrendered and the war ended.
The distinguished record of the all-black Tuskegee airmen during the war helped persuade President Harry Truman to desegregate the U.S. military in 1948.
Webb, 83, had planned to go to the Obama inauguration anyway. He has previously attended the inagurations of presidents Kennedy, Carter and Clinton.
But as a former Tuskegee Airman, he will be a honored guest sitting with former members of Congress in the terrace below the podium where Obama will be sworn in.
"It is an honor to literally have a front row seat to history being made," Webb said in a county media release. "I view the location of our seats as symbolic, because Obama stands on the shoulders of my fellow airmen and other trail blazers that helped pave the way for desegregation and ultimately, his place as the first African-American president."
