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StumbleUponThe Start of a Friendship for Life
The 77-year-old image is faded but familiar: 42 third-graders from Cincinnati's North Avondale Elementary School. A small child in the third row stands out; John Leahr is the only black boy in the class."Almost everything was segregated then,"recalls Herb Heilbrun, an 84-year-old real estate broker, "so we didn't play together. I wasn't a racist, but I didn't have black friends. I just thought that's the way the world was supposed to be."
Little did Herb imagine that he and John would be inextricably linked for the next three-quarters of a century -- that one of them would be instrumental in saving the other, and that a lesson in friendship would be taught.
More than a decade after the class picture was snapped, World War II broke out. The two men went their separate ways, never really knowing each other. Herb became a bomber pilot assigned to B-17 Flying Fortresses, and John, also wanting to do his part for his country, joined the Tuskegee Experiment.
"I'd always had dreams of flying, but there was no place for black pilots,";John remembers. In response to a lawsuit brought by a student petitioning to fly, a program to train black pilots was started. "The military thought they'd show we couldn't do it, and close it." But the Tuskegee Airmen surprised everyone, flying cover for hundreds of missions. Still, it wouldn't be until 1995, when HBO produced a film about the unit, that the world would hear of the brave exploits of these pilots.
The thrill of flying outweighed the disappointment John felt over the treatment he and his fellow airmen received. "On our first day of training at Moton Field in Tuskegee," he remembers, "our officer said, 'You boys came down here to fly airplanes, not to change social policy. If anybody gives you a hard time off base, you're on your own. The Army isn't going to protect you; your life is in your hands.' " White men in training to serve their country wouldn't be greeted so callously, John thought. "It was like he was saying, 'This is the South, and you're still black men. Your lives don't matter to anyone.' "
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