Denise,

Oops!! I goofed - Colonel Roberts was from Fairmount, West Virginia, not Fremont. Fairmount is located appriximately half way between Morgantown and Clarksburg along Interstate 79.

According to "Segregated Skies: All-Black Combat Squadrons of WWII" by Stanley Sandler, West Virginia State was the first Black institution to implement the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP), followed by Tuskegee Institute, Delaware State, Hampton Institute, Howard University, and North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State College.

Most of the Airmen received their basic flight training at one of those institutions prior to and during the implementation of the "Tuskegee Experiment," a program designed to fail, they thought. "They" = many in the War Department, Army Air Corps plus most Washington and State politicians.

There is much more to this phase of the Tuskegee Airmen history that you hardly ever hear about.

The bottom line, as Art so eloquently stated about the Tuskegee Airmen, "They each had that special something, they were a 'cut above'."

Bennie