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. |
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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
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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
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