By
Rich McKay
ORLANDO SENTINEL |
| Wearing
their old uniforms and polished medals,
about a dozen World War II veterans
joined local dignitaries and a 25-piece
military band Monday morning to honor
a place where thousands of America's
"Greatest Generation" learned
to fly in combat: the Orlando Army Air
Base.
Now Orlando Executive
Airport, the former pilot-training ground
is flanked by restaurants and strip
malls. It serves as a commercial airfield
for hundreds of private planes and jets.
It was handed back to the city after
the war in 1946, and eventually re-named
Orlando Executive Airport in 1982.
For its historical
significance in America's war effort,
the former base was designated with
an official marker from the Florida
Department of State. |
|
Sixteen
months before the U.S. entered World War II,
the Army Air Corps took control of the then
65-acre airfield surrounded by cow pastures
and Florida scrub just north of Lake Underhill.
It grew to become the Orlando
Army Air Base, the hub for a dozen military
airfields and several bombing ranges throughout
Central Florida and a place where air-combat
strategies for D-day were planned.
"We are here, not just
because of this marker, but because it honors
all the people who served their country, starting
right here in Orlando," said Thomas Tart,
a retired Orlando Utilities Commission attorney
and history buff who did much of the legwork
for the marker.
"Back in 1940, our
leaders said that the winds of war are coming,
and we need to get ready," he said.
There are only eight other
such markers in Orange County, including the
former Fort Gatlin
|
in
south Orlando and Fort Christmas in east
Orange.
"We need this [marker],
not for the people who are here now, but
for the people who are going to be here
100 years from now," Tart said. "They
might have some notion of Pearl Harbor,
but not know that we here in Orlando, a
year-and-a-half before the war broke out,
we were getting America ready for the fight."
Irving Reedy, 87, of Orlando,
was shot down in 1944 over German-occupied
Holland and spent 13 months in a prisoner
of war camp.
"I learned to fly
right here," said Reedy, who later
had a career as an OUC electrical engineer.
The plaque will be placed
at the southeast corner of Maguire Boulevard
and Livingston Street.
Rich
McKay can be reached at 407-420-5470 or
rmckay@orlandosentinel.com
|
