Photo by Toni Frissell - 1945

Meanwhile ... 

I've received an invitation to travel to Tuskegee Airfield to help to celebrate Women's Equality Day with the National Park Service team there on August 26th, and have accepted the honor.  I've never been to Alabama, nor to Atlanta for that matter, and the chance to see the King Center and to stand in the space where the fighting 99th trained to serve so valiantly is just too good to pass up.

Just thinking about it knocks off decades!

The invitation grew out of recent stories run in the media, and the interview featured on National Public Radio (NPR), which brought attention to my work here, and does not relate to the fact that I can boast of having dated at least 3 Tuskegee Airmen in my time, though that's the only thing that I can attribute it to at this point.   And that happened in the years before any of them entered the Air Force and before my marriage to Mel Reid.  I was about 18 at the time, and Kenneth "Bunny" Hernandez, Francis Collier, and Les Williams were eligible young bachelors who were natural choices for the heroic roles they were destined to play in the skies of WWII.  It looks like the Air Force and I had similar tastes in men.

... but I don't suppose anyone will expect me to speak about that from the lectern, right? 

I'm hoping to have a few days in Atlanta before returning to the Bay Area, but the only person I know there is a nephew who plans to be in the Bay Area for a family reunion that occurs that same week.

If anyone would like to do a meet-up while I'm there, I'd love it!