For Upstate South Carolina Honor Flight, A RETURN TO FOREVER

For Upstate South Carolina Veterans, A Return To Forever

By Dwight Cunningham 

(Sgt., 

USAF / Vietnam War)

The American Airlines jetliner’s human cargo was full of courage — forged some six decades ago and carried forward to this moment.

Under a warm September sky, the jet was showered from a pair of airport fire trucks as it approached the gate at Reagan National. The greeting was the first of countless many saluting Upstate South Carolina’s first Honor Flight for Vietnam veterans. 

It was a pilgrimage of incalculable peace, joy, beauty, strength and release. 

Doubtless, there was a courageous dignity among the throng. Long ago in a controversial war, the 92 veterans each stood firm in their inherent worth, values and humanity while confronting discomfort, conflict and, yes, injustice. No resorting to cruelty or degradation for them

Their respect and remembrances were on full display, along with the scores of volunteer guardians, medics and sponsors who accompanied them along their sometimes wobbly steps. 

As the sun grew hotter, it made no difference to the vets, many in wheelchairs as the group stopped at the Iwo Jima Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery’s graves before witnessing The Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of The Unknown Soldier,

After all, their young lives had been tempered by military service and battle scars, and today’s fatigue of aging. Every vet, whether standing or sitting, nonetheless exhaled solemn reverence and reflection as their military legacy snapped smartly to the time-honored drill.

After the ceremony, it was on to the World War II Memorial and what most wanted to see — “The Wall.”

Individuals all, they were bonded by that revered two pieces of polished black granite dug deep into the Washington landscape honoring the men and women who served in the Vietnam War.

The Wall chronologically lists the names of 58,318 Americans who gave their lives in service to their country.

No doubt, each veteran had his or her own comrades-in-arms to search for, and the flight’s planners gave them sufficient time to find those names, make etchings — and pray with gratitude to see another tomorrow.

The site also includes the Three Soldiers statue and the Vietnam Women’s Memorial, and the veterans gave due reverence to those icons with photographs and loving touches.

For me, there was Joanie, mother to an Army veteran who, like other guardians, paid $600 to make the journey. My compadre was Jim, a combat infantryman who has gone on to own a stellar Upstate printing business and become a world traveler with his wife. 

Joanie helped me find a Washington, D.C., native whose brother I went to school with. Specialist Five Calvin Bouknight is on The Wall. He was 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division, Army of the United States. His name is listed among the dead in the end credits of the Mel Gibson movie, “We Were Soldiers.”

Joanie conjured up her memories from the home front in east Tennessee. She recalled how she led a school walkout in protest to the war, after seeing so many guys from her hometown return “messed up.”

 

It was that kind of a time. Of derision and scorn back in “The World.” Of Agent Orange. Of sacrifices amid total service. Of nasty homecomings. But of oaths fulfilled.

On the return flight to Greenville-Spartanburg Airport, I surmise Jim had won the lottery, based on the bevy of cards, drawings from children and thank-you notes he received. Each of us got similar appreciation. 

“Your public awaits,” Joanie said, smiling as we got off the plane. At that moment, one of the organizers asked me how my day was.

“It was one of the best days of my life,” I responded.

Joanie wasn’t kidding. For me, the best was yet to come.

Huge posters of us in uniform back in the day were distributed to each individual soldier, sailor, Marine, airman or Coast Guardsman. We carried them as we descended the welcome home escalator with probably 700 or more folks in baggage claim awaiting our arrival with cheers, salutes, pats on the back and tears. 

It was an emotional scene that assuredly bestowed a cathartic release for the ages.

Back at home, I opened up the gift bag from the Honor Flight crew who made the day a flawless event. There was a medallion with this inscription:

“We can never repay your sacrifice. But we will Never Forget. Forever Grateful.”

And I say again to the Honor Flight team, thank you for your service, and for giving us veterans one of the best days of our lives.

                                  #  #  #

American Morale: Worn And Weary

By Dwight Cunningham 

You wake up one morning and learn that we’re at war. No real inkling that was going to be your day  — but there you were,  watching the president in a baseball cap telling us, to our weary faces, that Americans will die. Just because.

Other top war officials cavalierly also proclaim that war is hell and, yes, Americans will die. 

So, another day you wake up and their sinful prophecy has immediately come to pass. Six Americans aboard a refueling tanker crash with no survivors. 

Donald Trump meets their flag-draped coffins at Dover Air Force Base, wearing a baseball cap and then issuing a fundraising plea on his social media — as an airman’s body moves past the president’s soulless body. 

Then one day you wake up and you hear about a US strike killing Iranian schoolgirls. Washington takes no responsibility, even though verified accounts show that it was an American super weapon that hit its target. But the targeting was off because the maps and the technology didn’t jibe. 

Another day you wake up and you wanna go back to sleep after learning that your cost of living has skyrocketed. Gasoline is up at least $1 more a gallon, food prices have crept up again and your day is confounded with tough choices as everyday living — (“We’ve tamed inflation. Everybody knows that!”) — gets harder. 

Another day you learn that farmers are bemoaning the cost of diesel and fertilizer in this wartime excursion. 

Then another day you wake up breathlessly awaiting prime-time news-news about when  this conscious nightmare will end – only to hear Trump recount lies and add more game-show bluster to the moment. 

Mere hours pass and you wake up to news that the Pentagon has jettisoned its top Army general, the chief of staff. Who does that in the middle of a war? Also kicked out is the Army’s top chaplain. On Good Friday Eve, no less. 

But the next day is the capper: an American F15E fighter jet is shot down by Iranian forces. One Air Force crew member is rescued, but there’s another one missing, fate unknown and a $70,000 bounty on his head. The Iranians want the airman alive — and what a bargaining chip that would be against “The Great Satan.”

Having a downed American airman behind enemy lines is a logistical and operational nightmare. It puts dozens of personnel in slow-moving aircraft at risk for all kinds of incoming fire. (So much for having no boots on the ground, heh, Donald?)

But embedded in this daily narrative of Trump’s illogical war machine are clear signs that things aren’t going too well for our military.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has blocked the promotion of four colonels — two Black and two women officers — primarily because of their race or gender. Bet that doesn’t help morale throughout the ranks, especially among current and prospective enlistees, as well as service academy cadets and midshipmen. (“Should I stay in or get out, because my Commander in Chief thinks I’m a diversity hire?”)

Then there’s the biggest warship in the world, the USS Gerald Ford. You remember, that’s the $1.3 billion aircraft carrier whose toilets don’t work. 

In the middle of air operations against Iran, the Ford reported a massive laundry room fire that took hours to contain and injured about 200 sailors. However, new reports suggest that it got seriously hit by enemy fire. 

Whatever really happened remains under wraps — for now. But the reality is that the prized CVN-78 recently limped into Crete and faces two long years in dry dock repairs.

What an embarrassment —regardless of the facts or just how the Navy flagship became disabled during war. It is down for the count, and our global sea power is clearly more questionable with a super carrier out of commission. (With Taiwan in mind, China ought to be gloating over this development.)

Morale aboard the Ford was already at low tide because the crew was on a record overseas deployment exceeding 10 months, including Venezuelan operations. That’s a mighty long time to be on station and far away from home sweet home. 

On another one of these dreadful days of late, you learn that the Army wants you to enlist — get this, up to age 42. (As an Air Force veteran who enlisted at 17, I’d like to see some 40–something finish a 50-mile hike with a full load of gear on one’s back. I’ll bring the popcorn.)

Today, Trump wants a $1.5 trillion budget for military spending. He says no need for day care, health care, bridges and roads. We’re going to get rich selling US oil to the world, in part because we’ve got all this seized Venezuelan crude.

There are also unconfirmed reports that possibly 700 service members have been wounded or injured in this conflict. And then there are 13 American service members who fulfilled their oath to the Constitution. 

Trump goes by a different oath. His bravado is scripted not to unite but rather to dismantle alliances and cause world dismay. His nonsensical rhetoric are lies spewed with venomous rapture: “Bomb them back to the Stone Age, where they belong.” (Wow. Just wow!)

So, one day soon I hope the Pentagon and our national security press corps work harder to get the truth out of this nefarious, kleptocratic regime. 

Their watchdog incisors need only to follow Trump’s fading bully blueprint. 

Just tell it like it is, for pity’s sake.

The angles of American worn are everywhere. 

                    — 30 —

Jesse Jackson — A Remembrance

I was one of the “boys on the bus“ in ‘84 covering The Rev. Jesse Jackson for The Washington Times. (FYI: I was the only Black reporter on the national staff.) 

I remember traveling through the South and Midwest, including Memphis, when he was barnstorming, meeting with Black pastors at their national conventions to discuss his platform and raise critically needed funding. Jesse had leased a propeller-driven aircraft  from a white televangelist; I want to remember it was someone out of Louisiana. Anyway, the plane had constant problems — and so we were always operating on CPT. I had to tell my editors that even though I had stories scheduled, Jesse was never on time for my deadlines. I spent a week in Missouri going from Kansas City through Columbia and then to St. Louis with Jesse.

And when that “ Hymietown“ whisper got picked up by Milton Coleman at The Washington Post, and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan subsequently said that Coleman and other Black journalists,are “pure chump operatives” of white editors and should be harmed, I immediately wrote an opinion piece, defending us Black journalists. 

The takeaway: We had to tightrope between our skeptical newsroom managers and a skeptical, sometimes hostile Black populace. But we were journalists who happened to be Black — and Blacks who happened to be journalists.

When Jesse went to Syria to try to win back a downed American Navy pilot, I implored  my editors to send me because all other Reagan administration efforts had failed. No way would Jesse succeed, was the response, with them dismissively surmising it a failed adventure that smacked of a Jackson publicity stunt. 

They were dead wrong, of course. So, I was at Andrews Air Force Base when Jesse bought Navy Lt. Robert Goodman back for a triumphant homecoming in July, 1984. Later that day, a rally was held in a packed church in downtown Washington. (I want to say it was Metropolitan AME). Jesse introduced Goodman, a Black aviator, and everyone inside felt the love and the power of Jesse Jackson.

So, thanks, Jesse, for giving me the opportunity to spread my journalist wings. And my gratitude for giving voice, strength and support to untold millions of the underserved across our planet. 

My Washington Post Story: The good, the bad — and now the very ugly

As a Black child growing up in the 1950s in Washington, DC, my family subscribed to The Washington Afro-American, and my grandmother brought home the Washington Daily News, a Scripps Howard tabloid with the lighthouse icon in the masthead’s upper-left corner.

The only time I saw Black people in that paper were thumbnail mugshots of some alleged criminal. Didn’t see anyone who looked like me, my family or teachers in any local newspaper back then.

My first encounter with The Washington Post Times Herald came somewhere along the way when, as a teenager, I got a carrier job delivering it in Southeast Washington, in arguably the roughest part of town, the public housing development known as Barry Farms.

The Sunday paper was so humongous that my manager had to drop off bundles in different parts of my route.

I had to get an early start on Sundays, because I had to insert the heavy Sunday color section for the first half of my delivery, and then along Firth Sterling Avenue, I inserted the other 50 copies for my door-to-door deliveries.

I never got stiffed by my customers or robbed by the homeboys, many of whom I played basketball with at the playground. 

My customers may have been low income, but I know they were well informed by my Post product.

Fast forward. In high school, I wrecked my knee in football practice and became the team manager. I was tapped to phone in our Friday game results to the Post sports desk, earning $10 as a stringer. Perhaps that is when I was first bitten by the Bug Of Journalism.

But if not then, the glorious infection came after my Air Force enlistment in the Vietnam War. During that tour, the Chicago Tribune gave us troops free subscriptions, and I read pages of news to better understand what was happening at home — because it was hard to find the truth from my commanders overseas. I also grabbed copies of the New York Daily News and Sports Illustrated when I wasn’t engaged in war.

After the military and returning to Washington, I saw a posting at D.C. Teachers College for a dictation clerk at The Post. 

Applicants had to have good command of the English language and type at least 60 words per minute.

Well, I could always type like the wind, thanks to practicing on the second-hand Royal manual typewriter my Dad got me when I was about 12.

Now, my plan was to become a

history teacher. But…somewhere along the line I got bit by that old Bug Of Journalism, this time for sure.

As a dictation clerk, I took reporters’ live copy on six-part or four-part paper, depending on which desk it was destined for.

I took Metro, National and Foreign reporters, including dictation from the vaunted Black staff who collectively became the Metro Seven. I took dictation from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein before they became the celebrated Watergate scandal duo. I recall frequently asking Carl questions about his awkward copy (similar to a rewrite man, even though that wasn’t my lane.)

My gosh, in retrospect, I was imbibing in the caviar of my future craft.

But I left The Post after two years, knowing that they were never going to promote me to become a journalist.

It took some years for The Bug to work its infectious grace as I changed majors to print journalism and started stringing for The Afro before they finally put me on its tiny staff.

Later, I became its local reporter and sports editor, covering DC high school sports, Howard University and the Redskins before moving to Greensboro, North Carolina, for my first mainstream journalism job.

There, I was on the staff that became a Pulitzer Prize Finalist for its deep coverage of the infamous Klan-Nazi shootout in a Black public housing development in 1979. (Five protesters were killed that day. The white shooters were never convicted.)

After that journey, it was on to The Philadelphia Inquirer and the hardscrabble streets of Camden, New Jersey and Philly.

Wanting more challenges — and money — it was then on to The Washington Times, the conservative morning paper and an alternative to The Post’s liberalism. My beats, as one of four Black reporters, were everything the national desk didn’t see as top tier: Housing, Labor, Transportation and Minority Affairs. I was the only minority on National, but I carved out stories highlighting what even the Post didn’t see as viable.

Ronald Reagan had ascended to the presidency, and soon thereafter was sending aid to Chad to combat Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi incursion into the former French colony.

Onward to Chad, where I was met by Leon Dash, the Post’s intrepid Africa correspondent who took me under his wing. No matter that we worked for competitors. We were brothers in arms, in journalism and in our blackness.

We were surrounded by gunfire and Third World living conditions. We had to bribe officials to get our stories transmitted to Europe and beyond. Without Leon, one of the Metro Seven and a future Pulitzer winner, I sincerely doubt I could have returned a success.

Looking back, when I was at the Afro, I tried to do a story about heroin and D.C’s children encased in the rampant drug trade plaguing my home town.

I came close, but nobody, not the druggies, not the dealers, not the kids, not cops nor the prostitutes — they would trust and talk to me about the criminality, but never on the record.

Man, did I try. To no avail. 

When I was in Philadelphia, I learned that someone at the Post had indeed written that pièce de résistance. Her name was Janet Cooke, and she was awarded a Pulitzer for “Jimmy’s Story,” about a Black boy with a heroin addiction.

“Damn, she did it,” I recall ruefully saying again and again. She did what I had failed to do. 

I wanted to kick myself.

But it wasn't long thereafter when the world found out she had made up the whole thing. A work of pure fiction that had bamboozled all of journalism for a few disgraceful minutes.

But her stain hit me and my fellow Black journalists in Philly — because we knew our editors would distrust us more than ever, for no other reason than they thought we collectively couldn’t be trusted.

When her chicanery was discovered, a group of us congregated at a Center City bar to contemplate the inevitable blowback with editors looking at us and our copy sideways.

Thanks, Janet. Thanks Washington Post.

We survived. And there were a bevy of my former colleagues who wound up at The Post, where they did some solid journalism. Some of you are my Facebook friends whose daily journalistic superiority should have remained the gold standard in this Digital Age.

Even when the Post’s “Potomac”Sunday magazine delivered a hit job on young Blacks who were barred from downtown jewelry stores and the ensuing boycott, I marveled at its coverage.

Some of that period was included in Jill Nelson's wonderful novel, “Volunteer Slavery.” It was a treatise of mistreatment inside and outside The Post, and it should have been a lesson on respecting a largely loyal audience.

Not so, I regret to say. As the years passed, I have watched the newspaper’s demise, from journalistic icon into a laughingstock.

Early this century, I became editor in chief of The Afro, and tried to fill the void. I saw how the Post invariably missed stories in the city, how it wasn’t covering City Hall, the neighborhoods or its people. There was no sense of community in its metro pages. Even the sports section was empty as famed sports columnists Shirley Povich and Bob Addie were long departed.

So, today’s announcement of the gutting of The Post’s newsroom is most assuredly the anticipated death knell.

What was great is no more. What was a legacy of truth, accuracy and accountability is now a Dumpster fire.

This goes beyond my love for the craft of journalism. Today, the pulse of our democracy has lost its heart.

The Post’s motto has been “Democracy Dies In Darkness.”

Well, that light is now out.

                            —30–

THE FIRST AMENDMENT’S LAST HURRAH?

As a journalist of more than three decades, as a journalist who happens to be a Black journalist, as a reporter, editor, senior newsroom manager, as a journalism educator at four U.S universities, as a freelance journalist who still contributes to the body politic with credible information — the unconstitutional arrest of four journalists by the racist Trump administration forces me to wonder whether I need to have my own legal team on speed dial. 

There is a reason why I framed and display The First Amendment in my home. I have lived by it throughout my career. Now, many of my Facebook friends also have storied careers in journalism, upholding the sacred values of the Fourth Estate and the Founding Fathers’ vision. I know they are as troubled as I.

Today, I do not understand how those now in key positions in the journalism community aren’t expressing their outrage at the highest level. Have they been so intimidated that they would rather fatten their wallets instead of “afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted?”

Americans need to understand that this full-court assault on our freedoms follows an authoritarian playbook that eventually will destroy this almost 250-year experiment in equality for all. 

Some on Facebook have advised me not to be so challenging of this regime. Really? Know, too, that I am a Vietnam veteran who has also worked as a managerial advocate for disaster survivors from the 9/11 World Trade Center attack through Hurricane Katrina, sacrificing good health along the way. 

So, I’m not about to back down from serving my country — NOT EVER!

                            ###

August 1, 2025: America’s Newest Day Of Infamy

On so many fronts, the first day of August was a terrible day for the United States. 

We're sending nuclear submarines off the coast of Russia because President Trump must fitfully respond to Russian saber-rattling with anything to distract from the cause du jour, the ascension of convicted pedophile Ghislaine Maxwell to a cozy prison retreat in Texas. 

Beyond today’s psychic hits to national security, child abuse and judicial norms (all wrapped up in one), Trump also took to disemboweling the gold standard of American economic institutions, the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The monthly jobs report, a bulwark of economic data and guidance, didn’t suit Trump’s liking. So he sacked the BLS commissioner, an honest bureaucrat whose departure makes for likely suspicious numbers ahead. 

August 1 signals to the world’s bankers that America cannot be counted on to be truthful about forthcoming economic data — given that autocratic Trump will install a nefarious chef to cook the books to please. 

The jobs numbers are down due to Trump’s disastrous immigration crackdowns and tariffs, which kicked in August 1. Still, there’s $200 million to redo the White House ballroom. In Trumpian gold leaf, to be sure.

We have become mummified to Trump's excesses. Needless to say, if Obama, Biden or Bush had committed the same atrocious acts, impeachment would ring all over the land.  

In the Ghislaine Maxwell case, Trump has demagnetized our moral compass. A heinous woman who used money and power along with consort Jeffrey Epstein to dehumanize hundreds of young girls is striding toward a full pardon by Trump. The minimum-security gambit is just a way to numb America’s fading vision of protecting our children — and shielding Trump’s past. 

In just six months, Trump’s shriveling of America has taken hold. Institutionally, media companies, law firms and universities have all kowtowed to Trump, agreeing to pay ransoms to “comply” with Trump grievances about liberals, diversity-equity initiatives and anti-Israeli sentiment on elite college campuses. 

Even the federal courts can’t catch a break, knowing that whatever ruling goes against Trump’s demagoguery will doubtless be reversed by the complicit US Supreme Court.

Numb yet?

Every action coming out 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. is meant to castrate American democracy. But the Democrats are decaying too fast to thwart Trump’s messianic behaviors.

On August 1, 2025, American allies  drew closer toward acknowledging genocide in Gaza — with the United States on the wrong side of life, if not also liberty and the Palestinian pursuit of happiness. More in Gaza were killed today as they struggled to secure food amidst gangs and Israeli bullets supplied by the United States.

Meanwhile, our own food scarcity is starker, given federal cuts and food banks decrying dwindling stocks amid overwhelming demand. 

Those who can buy travel almost comatose through half-empty supermarkets, now numb to prices. With impulse buying out the window, shoppers arrive with smartphone lists instead. 

Expect even more of the same as Proctor & Gamble’s 25-percent hike takes effect August 1 on its product line. The household goods leader blames increased costs for tariff-laden raw materials. It’s goodbye, Crest and Tide, hello bargain brands.

The nation’s cultural sensibilities  also took a big hit today. The Smithsonian Institution’s impeachment exhibit will no longer feature twice-impeached Trump. Someone ordered that fact deleted. But down the street, the storied Kennedy Center Opera House may soon have, on full display, the name of the president’s wife, whose cultural contributions were highlighted in her nude pictorials.

Those announcements pale with August 1’s devastation that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will wind down operations. CPB is closing after Trump rescinded $1.1 billion in funding for the nonprofit that has helped sustain National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, and it counts hundreds of local public media stations across the country.

“Public media has been one of the most trusted institutions in American life,” CPB President and CEO Patricia Harrison said in a statement, “providing educational opportunity, emergency alerts, civil discourse, and cultural connection to every corner of the country.”

Yes, America, Big Bird is dying.

Borrowing from another cultural icon, and referencing Denzel Washington after he got shot in the butt in his Oscar-winning “Training Day”: What a day! What a motherfucking day!”