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Veterans Day    

11 November 2025

Much as we welcome national holidays as a day off around here, we find this Veterans Day a little contentious. There are peoople in high places, let's just say, who would like to forget the contributions of some who have served.

Tuskegee Airman. Ramitelli, Italy, March 1945.

The image above shows an unidentified Tuskegee airman standing on an airfield, looking at airplanes, in Ramitelli, Italy, in March 1945.

It was one of two images chosen by the Library of Congress reference librarian Jon Eaker to celebrate Veterans Day in 2020.

Eaker wrote of the image:

A few months before the Nazis surrendered, a Tuskegee airman watches three fighter planes fly by. The Tuskegee Airmen was a unit of African American pilots, trained in Tuskegee, Alabama, that flew missions in Europe during World War II. Theirs was the first unit of African American aviators in the Army Air Corps. Photographer Toni Frissell took pictures of the airmen (the 332nd Fighter Group) while they were based in southern Italy. I imagine that this airman is hoping they all make it back safely, but you also wonder, this close to victory over Germany, if he is thinking about what he’ll do after the war and what type of country he will return to.

The original, of course, was a black and white photo. We took the liberty of bringing it into the era of phone images, cropping it and colorizing it with Photoshop's neural filter.

Not as a stunt, though.

In One of the Last Surviving Tuskegee Airmen Remembers Struggle for Recognition Amid Trump's DEI Purge, Associated Press reporters Mead Gruver and Thomas Peipert wrote, "With members of a trailblazing Black Air Force unit passing away at advanced ages, efforts to remain true to their memory carry on despite sometimes confusing orders from President Donald Trump as he purges federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs."

The story goes on to quote Col. James H. Harvey III, age 101, about the removal of airman videos and photos:

"I thought there was progress in that area, but evidently there isn't," said Harvey, who blamed Trump for contributing to what he sees as worsening prejudice in the U.S. "I'll tell him to his face. No problem," he said. "I'll tell him, 'You're a racist,' and see what he has to say about that. What can they do to me? Just kill me, that's all."

Ironic words from a man who put his life on the line for a country that includes people like the president who concocted deferments to avoid the service.

We knew Marilyn LaGrone-Amaral, the daughter of Roy LaGrone, a Tuskegee Airman, near the end of her life. She shared a valuable lesson about taking care of the things that take care of you.

Which is what service is all about. And why today we salute those who took care of us, defending a country that even now is under assault. A country our anonymous airman in the photos above would have been right to wonder, as Eaker speculated, "what type of country he will return to."

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