For this generation some thoughts from an aging boomer.
I remember vividly standing on a tarmac at RAF Lankenheath Air Base in England in the late spring of 1968. I and 11 other airman stood at the bottom of a stairway that led to the door of an C-141 Starlifter air transport.
Our job that night was to secure the transfer to the United States of Dr. Martin Luher King Jr.'s assassin, James Earl Ray, who had been captured earlier in the day in London.
As Ray was rushed up the steps, wrapped in a straight-jacket, we were all reminded of our country 3,000 miles away where the murders of King and Bobby Kennedy made the United States seem small and ugly, distant and alien.
I never thought I would see the day an African-American would be elected president.
For all of you much younger than I, cherish this moment.
Many of my contemporaries have done a fine job of talking with political correctness about race.
But too many lacked the guts to actually THINK political correctness with real conviction.
Maybe, jst maybe, Obama's election represents the first important step to an America that is truly color-blind, both in mind and spirit.
