“My grandfather was a very modest man,” said Angie Billups Washington. “He did not like the spotlight. If we could hear him now, he would be saying, ‘All this, for me?’”
Washington’s grandfather isn’t just anyone. He is the late Lt. Col. Alva Temple, a fighter pilot with the famed Tuskegee Airmen, and Friday morning the terminal at the Columbus-Lowndes County Airport was named in his honor.
The renaming was part of the airport’s 70th anniversary celebration, and well more than 100 people from all over Lowndes County showed up to honor Temple’s memory. Temple, a native of Carrollton, Alabama, passed away in Columbus in 2004.
“Twenty years of distinguished service, and 120 combat missions, were something he did because he wanted to serve his country and provide for his family,” Washington said. “He didn’t do it for the accolades. How many of us can say that?”
The Tuskegee Airmen were established in an attempt to entrench discrimination against African Americans, said U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Aaron Jones.
“It was not set up to create opportunity,” Jones said. “It was set up to prove that African Americans were incapable of flying. We now know that’s not the case.”
The Tuskegee Airmen would go on to be hugely successful bomber escorts, Jones said, in fact proving more successful than other groups.
“In a short time they become highly regarded and often requested,” Jones said.
Temple, then a captain, competed in the first Top Gun competition, said Air Force Senior Master Sgt. Monieka Lucas. He led a team also composed of First Lt. Harry Stewart Jr., First Lt. James H. Harvey III and alternate pilot First Lt. Buford Johnson.
“In 1949, they competed in the Air Force’s inaugural Top Gun team competition,” Lucas said. “… This team won the propeller-driven category. Although Temple’s team led the competition from start to finish, the win was not acknowledged until 46 years later.”
Dan Duston, the fixed-base operator at the airport, said the facility has always played a vital role in Lowndes County’s history.
“It was established in late 1952, and for about 20 years it was home to Southern Airways,” he said. “… Many family members experienced many emotions as their loved ones left from (this airport) to go to Vietnam to serve their country. Untold numbers of veterans from Mississippi and Alabama walked through these doors behind me to go to war.”
The transition to jet aircraft meant the need for a longer runway, and the airport couldn’t expand, Duston said.
“With Highway 69 crossing the south end, and an industrial park on the north end, decisions were made to establish a new airport in a centralized location,” Duston said. “Thus the Golden Triangle Regional Airport was established.”
The name isn’t the only thing Temple gave to the airport, Washington said.
“He at one time owned this land,” she said. “… What an amazing tribute that will continue to educate those young and old about an amazing legacy.”
Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.
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