Myron Donald grew up on a corner of his grandfather’s farm Moravia in central New York. His father was a carpenter; his mother a housewife. He has two brothers and a sister. In high school, he played football, baseball and basketball and was president of the Student Council. He graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 1965 and entered pilot training in Selma, Alabama, just a few months after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s civil rights march to Montgomery.
Quiet Vietnam POW ‘not a hero’ (Michael Lenker)
After an almost imperceptible hesitation, Mike Lenker stood. About 500 people politely applauded when Lenker, 60, was introduced as a prisoner of the Vietnam War. It was a fleeting formality between the Harlem High School Choraleers’ “Song for the Unsung Hero” and the keynote speech, part of the hourlong Tribute