The next morning I put on my good dress, took a screwdriver out of Leons toolbox, walked out to the brick wall he built one brick at a time, and unscrewed the little plaque with his fathers name on it, and took out the envelope Leon hid behind it, the one he got from Washington in 2009.
The councilman had come with a camera crew, wanting my yes on the news. He said the city was widening Magnolia for the new medical center, that my house was in the path, that progress does not wait on sentiment, that the wall was coming down in the spring either way.
He did not know what was behind the plaque.
My Leon, the son of a Tuskegee Airman, had spent years getting our house and his fathers wall placed on the National Register of Historic Places, a federal protection he secured in 2009, which means the city cannot simply widen a road through a recognized piece of Tuskegee Airmen history.
Leon knew what his fathers name meant, and what this street meant, and he knew that someday progress would come looking. So he did the patient thing. He gathered the history, the records of his fathers service, the story of the wall, and he petitioned, and in 2009 Washington answered, and our home went on the National Register, and the letter that said so had been sitting behind his fathers name ever since.
A listed historic property is not something a councilman takes with a camera crew and a smile. The road can be widened another way, or not at all, but it does not roll over a protected landmark just because a widow seemed like an easy yes.
When the councilman came back, cameras and all, I did not make a scene. I handed him a copy of the National Register listing and the letter from Washington, and I said, you wanted this on the news. Good. Tell them the city tried to bulldoze a Tuskegee Airmans wall and his sons home, and tell them it is protected by the federal government, and has been since 2009. Then tell them how youre going to route your road around history instead of through it.
The camera crew, to their credit, wrote every word down. The story that aired was not the one the councilman wanted. The medical center found another path. The wall still stands.
I polish that plaque every Saturday, Leons daddys name shining in the sun. Progress does not wait on sentiment, the councilman had said. My Leon did not leave it to sentiment. He left it to the federal government, in writing, behind his fathers name, so that no city could ever take the wall a Tuskegee Airmans son built with his own two hands.