LIVE A LIFE OF NO REGRETS!!: The Great American Trip 2019 - Tuskegee Airman National Historic Site & Tuskegee Institute

Quote from "Stepping Heavenward" by Mrs. E. Prentiss

"She says I shall now have one mouth more to fill and two feet the more to shoe, more disturbed nights, more laborious days, and less leisure or visiting, reading, music and drawing.

Well! This is one side of the story, to be sure, but I look at the other.

Here is a sweet, fragrant mouth to kiss; here are two more feet to make music with their pattering about my nursery. Here is a soul to train for God; and the body in which dwells is worthy of all it will cost, since it is the abode of a kingly tenant. I may see less of friends, but I have gained one dearer than them all, to whom, while I minister in Christ's name, I make a willing sacrifice of what little leisure for my own recreation my other dear darlings had left me. Yes, my precious baby, you are welcome to her time, her strength, her health, her tenderest cares, to her lifelong prayers! Oh, how rich I am, how truly, wondrously blest!"

Wednesday, October 2, 2019

The Great American Trip 2019 - Tuskegee Airman National Historic Site & Tuskegee Institute - 2nd & 3rd Stops

We drove from Ocmulgee Mounds in Georgia to Tuskegee Airman National Historic Site in Alabama. I made a file for each of our stops that included some facts from the National Park Service Website so we could learn a bit before we arrived at each stop. We also watched about the Airman on Netflix. They had many options, but we watched " The Tuskegee Airmen" one evening a few weeks prior to our trip. This is a must see historical site. Everyone was incredibly friendly and helpful as the kiddos earned their badges. The children loved seeing the planes, hearing the planes outside the building taking off, and learning sadly about history we were ashamed to hear revealing how people of color were treated.

"In history, a great volume is unrolled for our instruction,

drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors

and infirmities of mankind."

Edmund Burke

Growing up a military brat who had friends of all races, I'm still astounded that people don't treat all people with kindness exactly the way they'd want to be treated (the golden rule). I love hearing people's life stories. Hearing some stories of the pilots about where they came from, what their education consisted of, how they were treated, how many survived, and what their lives looked like post war was truly interesting to me and my children. Go to their website to plan your trip which you can find by clicking on this link.

It began to rain pretty hard so we didn't hike as much as we'd have liked on the trails close by, so we headed to stop #3: Tuskegee National Historic Site.

The rain slowed a bit, but the folks were out on their lunch break I suppose when we got there. We looked into windows, and walked around. We will have to come back another day so we can get our stamps, earn our Junior Ranger badge, and learn some history.