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Pioneering Tuskegee Airman Laid to Rest in Arlington
Wednesday, July 17, 2002
By SSgt. C. Todd Lopez
U.S. Air Force
Special to the American Forces Press Service

A heritage flight consisting of two P-51 Mustang fighters (center), an F-16 (left) and an F-15 pay tribute to Gen. Benjamin O. Davis Jr. during his full honors funeral at Arlington National Cemetery, Washington, D.C., on July 17, 2002. Davis died July 4 at age 89.
(High-Resolution Image).
Image Credit: Tech. Sgt. Jim Varhegyi -- USAF.

At Arlington National Cemetery, as is military tradition, a horse pulled Davis' casket on a caisson to the gravesite. Tuskegee Airmen served as honorary pallbearers. During the Arlington service, the Air Force honor guard rendered the time-honored courtesies to a hero passed: a cannon salute, a lone bugler playing taps and the passing of the American flag to the next of kin.

WASHINGTON -- AFIS
Friends, family, military and retired military members gathered today to pay tribute and to lay to rest an Air Force pioneer.

Gen. Benjamin O. Davis Jr., the first African-American Air Force general, was remembered in a memorial service at the Bolling Air Force Base Chapel here. After the ceremony, he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors. Davis died July 4 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center of natural causes. He was 89.

Alan Gropman, chairman of the Grand Strategy Department at National Defense University here, delivered the eulogy. Many of those in attendance wore the distinctive red jackets of the Tuskegee Airmen -- members of the units Davis commanded during and after World War II.

"Gen. Benjamin O. Davis Jr. is an American hero," Gropman said. "We call those who demonstrate physical courage heroes because they risk their lives for something bigger than themselves.

"General Davis risked his life for his nation and for his people. He believed all his adult life in racial integration and thought he could bring this essential reform to America once World War II began. If he demonstrated blacks could fly and fight and lead with the same skill and courage as whites, a notion foreign to white America of 1941, he believed he could destroy the myth of racial inferiority.
(More: DoD News Source)
2002 © The United States Department of Defense.

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