MURFREESBORO — A sharecropper’s
son who flew into the pages of history will be the guest on the next edition of
the “MTSU On the Record” radio program.
Host Gina Logue’s interview with retired Col. William “Greg”
Gregory will air from 5:30-6 p.m. Monday, March 23, and from 8-8:30 a.m.
Sunday, March 29, on WMOT-FM (89.5 and www.wmot.org).
The aviation ace will speak about his extraordinary career
at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, April 2, in Room 204 of the Todd Building on campus.
This event is free and open to the public.
Gregory, who flew his first airplane as an MTSU student in
1940, went on to fly missions over North Africa and Europe in the U.S. Army Air
Corps during World War II.
After the creation of the U.S. Air Force, Gregory commanded
a squadron of U-2 pilots who flew reconnaissance missions over Cuba during the
Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
The photographs these pilots took confirmed the presence of
Soviet-made nuclear missiles in Cuba, only 90 miles from the American
continent. The pictures and information they obtained helped inform the
decisions made by President John F. Kennedy, his cabinet and the Joint Chiefs
of Staff.
“It was really a tense time and hard to realize how close we
came to going to war,” said Gregory. “Kennedy’s staff was about equally divided
between the half that wanted to knock out the missiles immediately and the
other half that wanted to reason with (Soviet Premier Nikita) Khrushchev.”
Though Gregory never graduated from MTSU because he joined
the Army in his junior year, he has remained a solid supporter of the
university, establishing a scholarship to MTSU for students from either Trousdale
or Macon counties.
To listen to previous “MTSU On the Record” programs, go to http://www.mtsunews.com/ontherecord/.
For more information, contact Logue at 615-898-5081 or
WMOT-FM at 615-898-2800.
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