Mission accomplished

At 88, veteran to get Eagle Scout award
By John Wilkens
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
August 7, 2004

Eugene Cheatham remembers standing in the rain, looking in the window and making a decision he would regret for seven decades.

"I can't go in there," he told himself.

Inside was a review board for Boy Scouts who had earned the organization's highest honor: Eagle. Cheatham was supposed to be among them.

But as he watched the others settle into the school auditorium on that day in 1930 in New York City, he saw Scouts in full uniform, clean and pressed, and adults in their Sunday finest.

He had on jeans and an old shirt, topped by his Scout sash and cap. It was all his family could afford. And now it was wet from the three-mile walk to the ceremony that the teenager had made alone from his home in Harlem.

"I ask myself all the time whether it was false pride that kept me out, or what," Cheatham said. "But I was ashamed of the way I looked, and I didn't go in."

He turned around and walked home, put his sash and cap in a drawer, and never went back to the Boy Scouts. That, he figured, was that.

Except it wasn't.

Rarely a day went by that Cheatham didn't think about it, and over time, that became a lot of days. Cheatham is almost 89 now. The incident, he said, remained "a sad spot in my heart."

It's not that walking away from the ceremony derailed his life in any major way. Cheatham grew up to be a part of history, one of the pioneering black pilots known as the Tuskegee Airmen. Their exploits during World War II cleared the way for racial integration in the military and beyond.

Cheatham flew more than 100 missions during the Korean War, reached the rank of lieutenant colonel, and then became a civilian personnel officer at Air Force bases in the United States and Japan. He retired in 1977 and settled in Spring Valley in a home near the Sweetwater Reservoir.

Married for 50 years, he and Sylvia raised three children, and that led to six grandchildren, and that in turn to six great-grandchildren. "I've been blessed in so many ways," he said.

Except one. Eugene Cheatham is at an age and place where he wonders about fate. He wonders what it was that made him turn away that rainy day in 1930.

And what it was that brought Brian O'Keefe into his life.




Brian O'Keefe is a 31-year-old Navy hospital corpsman. A couple of years ago, when he was assigned to Camp Pendleton, he was in charge of lining up speakers for a Veterans Day event at the base.
He called someone he knew at the Aerospace Museum in Balboa Park. That person put him in touch with Cheatham.

One of the things Cheatham likes to do in his golden years is give talks to schoolchildren and service groups, so he told O'Keefe that, sure, I'll come to your Veterans Day program. But, he said, I need a ride.

O'Keefe picked him up in Spring Valley. While they were driving to Camp Pendleton, the corpsman asked the retired aviator about all he had seen and done.

Was there anything you didn't get out of your life that you wished you had? O'Keefe asked. Do you have any regrets?

Cheatham told him about the Boy Scouts and standing in the rain and deciding not to go in. Becoming an Eagle Scout was his first major personal accomplishment, Cheatham said, and he had nothing to show for it.

As a corpsman, O'Keefe is used to fixing things, like battlefield wounds. He's been with the "Devil Docs" on tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. So when Cheatham told his story, it wasn't unusual that O'Keefe almost immediately started thinking about how to fix it.

His interest went beyond instinct. O'Keefe is an Eagle Scout. So is his brother, his father and his grandfather. The O'Keefes know what it takes to earn that honor – only about 4 percent of all Scouts make it that far – and what it means to those who do.

After the Veterans Day event, O'Keefe took Cheatham home, and then he called his father, Bob, an executive with a consulting firm in Chicago. "We just felt like this was a wrong that needed to be righted," Bob O'Keefe said.

Easier said than done.

They approached Scout officials in San Diego about sponsoring the effort and got nowhere, O'Keefe said. They contacted the national headquarters in Irving, Texas, and were told they needed documentation.

There was no documentation. "We cannot prove that Lt. Col. Cheatham was even a Scout," one official at the national headquarters wrote earlier this year.

They tried to find records with Cheatham's old troop in New York, but the papers had been destroyed in the 1970s. They tried to find boys, now men, who had been there with him. Cheatham had outlived them all.

They even contacted former Presidents Bush and Ford asking for help. Neither said he was in a position to intervene.

"Everybody was doing their best," Cheatham said, "but I just figured it wasn't going to happen."




They located a Scout manual from the 1920s, which listed the requirements at the time – 21 merit badges – to become an Eagle Scout. O'Keefe sat down with Cheatham and they went through it together, trolling for details.
Cheatham remembered camping and swimming with his troop at a farm in Virginia. (The farmer had two daughters named Roberta and Billie.)

He remembered going to a fire station in New York for a course on public health. (The station was at 135th Street and Seventh Avenue.)

He remembered making a crystal-set radio. (On it, he heard Bing Crosby for the first time.)

And on and on.

To evaluate Cheatham's story, the O'Keefes put together a Board of Review of various people with ties to Scouting. The O'Keefes were on it, along with another relative, one of Bob O'Keefe's colleagues at work, and the leader of a troop in Chicago that had agreed to sponsor Cheatham after Bob O'Keefe approached them.

The board members all concluded Cheatham had earned the required merit badges and should be awarded the rank of Eagle. A formal 70-page petition was filed with the national headquarters.

"Most reviews can only hope a Scout will turn out to be a good citizen," wrote John Murnane, one of the board members. "In Gene's case . . . we know the ending of the story, and it is easy to benchmark his performance against his life."

Michael Ramsey, associate director of communications at the Boy Scouts' headquarters, said the committee that considers special requests meets three times a year. "It's a strenuous review process," he said, "and a pretty rare occurrence for one to be granted."

The committee looked at the petition in May. Nobody heard anything for a couple of weeks. Cheatham was at home when the phone rang. It was Bob O'Keefe.

"Gene," he said, "we made it."

Cheatham remembers being stunned into silence for several moments. The sad spot in his heart was gone. A dream, he said, had finally come true.

The ceremony is scheduled for Sept. 18 at the Aerospace Museum. Cheatham said family and friends will be there, including some Tuskegee Airmen. Both O'Keefes plan to attend, along with others who helped make the Eagle award fly.

It doesn't figure to be raining on a September day in San Diego, so Cheatham probably won't have to worry about that this time. And he won't be dressed in jeans, with just a Scout sash and cap.

The troop from Chicago is giving him a full uniform. Smiling at the idea of it, Cheatham said, "I just hope it fits."



RONI GALGANO / Union-Tribune
Eugene Cheatham, 88, flew more than 100 missions during the Korean War and became a lieutenant colonel. But he never received his Eagle Scout award. On Sept. 18 at Balboa Park's Aerospace Museum, thanks to efforts spearheaded by a local Navy corpsman, he will.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/m...-1n7scout.html


Ellie