Tuskegee Airmen to Host Annual Gala

The Maj. Gen. Irene Trowell-Harris Chapter of the national Tuskegee Airmen association will be hosting its 19th Annual Tuition-Awards Dinner at six p.m. on Saturday, February 4, at Anthony’s Pier 9, in New Windsor. The dinner is open to the public and will feature honoree and guest speaker Anne Palmer, the author and Emmy winning former talk show host.
Palmer’s father, Augustus “Big Gus” Palmer Sr., was a member of the original World War II Tuskegee Airmen. Anne Palmer is a motivational speaker and life coach who has lectured internationally, and she is the author of the book The Gifted Trap, about human potential and exploiting one’s qualities and capabilities.

At the dinner, 12 Hudson Valley high school seniors will be awarded $1,000 college tuition-assistance awards, a tradition that stretches back over the past 19 years during which the Stewart Airport-based Tuskegee Airmen chapter has awarded nearly $200,000 in such scholarships during Black History Month. Chapter President Glendon Fraser, a former New York Air National Guard Lockheed C-5 Glaxy command pilot, now a senior Boeing 777 captain for United Air Lines, said, “We do this not only to advance their education but to encourage young people to spread and carry on the ideals that have come down to us from the original Tuskegee Airmen–perseverence, fierce bravery, and an unwillingness to submit to prejudice and hatred.”

The Tuskegee Airmen dinner is annually attended by 300-plus area notables, politicians, military personnel from West Point and the Stewart-based Air Guard 105th Airlift Wing, Trowell-Harris chapter members, the teenagers who are members of the chapter’s unique Lee A. Archer Jr. Red Tail Youth Flying Program, and many others.

Major General Trowell-Harris, the chapter’s namesake and the highest-ranking woman in the entire U. S. Air National Guard, will herself be in attendance.

Dinner tickets are available for purchase at www.tai-ny.com.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email