Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 4172) to name the Department of Veterans Affairs community- based outpatient clinic in Aurora, Colorado, as the ``Lieutenant Colonel…
Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 4172) to name the Department of Veterans Affairs community- based outpatient clinic in Aurora, Colorado, as the ``Lieutenant Colonel John W. Mosley VA Clinic.''
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and to insert extraneous material on H.R. 4172.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to remember the life of John W. Mosley, a Denver native who began his legendary service to our Nation in the United States Army Air Corps as a World War II Tuskegee Airman, one of our Nation's first Black military aviators.
This bill, H.R. 4172, will name the Department of Veterans Affairs new community-based outpatient clinic in Aurora, Colorado, as the Lieutenant Colonel John W. Mosley VA Clinic. I thank my colleague, Representative Jason Crow, a former Army Ranger, for championing this effort.
To say that Lieutenant Colonel Mosley led a remarkable life would be an understatement. Growing up in a segregated neighborhood in Denver, he became valedictorian of his high school class. In 1939, Lieutenant Colonel Mosley became a National Merit Scholar and was one of the first Black students to attend Colorado State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, which is now Colorado State University. Mosley was the school's first Black varsity football player and served as vice president of his college class as a junior and as a senior.
At the start of the Second World War, Mosley dreamed of serving his country as a pilot. After being denied the opportunity to join the ROTC program in college, Lieutenant Colonel Mosley paid for his own flight physical and started taking flying lessons.
And even after the Army Air Corps established the Tuskegee Airmen program in June 1941, Mosley was not initially drafted to join them.
Mosley was instead sent to an artillery unit at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Mosley protested, writing letters to Members of Congress and the President until he was finally accepted into the Tuskegee unit.
Together, the Tuskegee Airmen flew more than 15,000 missions over North Africa and Europe during World War II. Lieutenant Colonel Mosley later served as a pilot in the Berlin Airlift, delivering loads of supplies to the Soviet-blockaded sectors of the city.
Upon Lieutenant Colonel Mosley's death in 2015 at the age of 93, his son, Eric, told the Denver Post that Lieutenant Colonel Mosley always said that ``he had to fight in order to fight. . . . He had to struggle to be able to fight for his country.''
Having paved the way as a Tuskegee Airman, Lieutenant Colonel Mosley later worked with the Truman administration to draft policies that would eventually fully integrate the United States Armed Forces.
Mosley went on to serve our Nation in the United States Air Force during the Korean war and Vietnam war, retiring in 1970.
Mosley then joined the Federal civil service, becoming a special assistant to the undersecretary in the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare before finally returning home to Colorado where he and his wife, Edna, continued their civil rights advocacy.
I should also mention that Edna Mosley was a trailblazer in her own right, becoming Aurora, Colorado's, first African American city councilwoman in 1992.
H.R. 4172 has letters of support from our Colorado delegation colleagues, the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Disabled American Veterans.
Mr. Speaker, I include these letters in the Record.
Congress of the United States,
Washington, DC.
Hon. Jon Tester,
Chairman, Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, Washington,
Once again, I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 4172 to name the new VA community-based clinic in Aurora, Colorado, after Lieutenant Colonel John W. Mosley, and by doing so, we will help ensure that his legacy
lives on and continues to inspire future generations to break barriers and fight for justice and equality.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Crow), the author of this legislation and also a subcommittee chairman of the Small Business Committee and a member of the House Armed Services Committee.
Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I am prepared to close, but before I do I will just let the gentleman from Colorado know that I am honored to represent the University of California Riverside, which is the repository of the Tuskegee Airmen Collection, which is formerly known as the Tuskegee Airmen Archives.
We are proud to have the papers of many of the 992 pilots who graduated from the Tuskegee Air Field courses who advanced race relations in our country. I am certainly hopeful that we will have the availability of the papers from Colonel Mosley that might, if it is not already in our archives, to be added.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I ask all my colleagues to join me in passing H.R. 4172 to name the VA clinic in Aurora, Colorado, as the Lieutenant Colonel John W. Mosley VA clinic, and I yield back the balance of my time.
