As a boy during the Great Depression, Robert Holts hawked newspapers in downtown Omaha.
But he couldn’t get a drink of water at some of the local businesses because of the color of his skin.
The North Omaha youth joined the still-segregated U.S. Army in November 1942. He wound up a member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen — one of 21 with ties to Omaha, said Robert Rose, president of the Nebraska-based Alfonza W. Davis Chapter of the Tuskegee Airmen.
