All are invited to attend an Opening Reception at 5:30 p.m. Friday, May 27 near the Lakeside Schoolhouse.
Lakeside Chautauqua President & CEO Kip Greenhill will welcome guests and introduce featured speaker, Dr. Harold Brown, a retired U.S. Army Air Force Officer who served during World War II as a combat fighter pilot with the 332nd Fighter Group, best known as the Tuskegee Airmen.
Dr. Brown’s P-51C aircraft was shot down in the European Theatre of World War II, and he became a prisoner of war. He was flying a P-51C east of Bruck, Austria. His flight path took him over anti-aircraft emplacements that shot his plane down. He was surrounded by German citizens who then attempted to lynch him before a German constable intervened and took him to a prisoner of war camp. He was one of 32 of the Tuskegee Airmen to be captured during the war.
Following his retirement from the military, Dr. Brown earned a doctorate degree and became Vice President of Academic Affairs at Columbus State Community College. He retired from academia in 1986. Dr. Brown and his wife wrote Keep Your Airspeed Up: The Story of a Tuskegee Airman, a memoir about his World War II service, and published it in 2017. He will sign books at the reception.