Willis Saunders never got to see the movie.
The movie is called “Red Tails’’ and it’s about the Tuskegee Airmen, the all-black aviation combat unit that broke the color barrier in the skies and helped beat the Nazis, to boot.
Saunders was a Tuskegee Airman, but by the time the movie hit the theaters a couple of weeks ago he was too sick to see it. A week after the film premiered nationwide, taking in $19 million and second place in the box office on its opening weekend, he was dead.
Saunders was a legendary Boston cop. When he stepped down in 1992 as a deputy superintendent, they printed up 500 tickets for his retirement dinner. And then 1,000 people showed up. It seemed that just as many crowded into Charles Street AME Church in Roxbury yesterday for his funeral, his homegoing, as they say in the great African-American churches. It was more than a homegoing; it was a black history lesson in Black History Month.
Saunders was a Roxbury guy, and after the Rev. Gregory Groover asked anyone with Roxbury roots to stand up, most of the congregation rose. Saunders left this world as he entered it: surrounded by Roxbury folks.
His next-door neighbor, the Rev. Robert Gray, has a cousin, Leo Gray, who flew combat missions as a Tuskegee Airman. Leo Gray lives in Florida and whenever Rev. Gray was outside, talking to him on his cellphone, Saunders would amble onto the porch.
“Is that Leo?’’ he’d say. “Let me talk to him.’’
The good reverend had to make like Job, waiting to get that phone back.
When a Tuskegee Airman dies, he becomes a Lonely Eagle. And when he dies, he is surrounded by his old comrades, their bright red ties a reminder of those bright red tails on the planes that changed this country and changed history.
DelBrook Binns was wearing one of those red ties, standing at the pulpit, remembering Saunders, when he asked the other men in red ties to stand.
Six old men who loved their country more than it loved them back stood, and the applause that bounced off the walls of the old church and washed over them was so loud that you had to believe that Saunders, lying in a casket at the foot of the altar, heard it, too.
As a cop, Saunders was night commander, keeping watch as the city slept. He was a take-charge, humble guy who got things done and didn’t spend much time worrying. But he worried about posterity.
It is why he and his comrades went into schools to tell their story. It is why he wanted “Red Tails’’ made. He knew a Hollywood film would reach more people than any book. He believed that “Saving Private Ryan’’ informed millions about the greatness of a generation that stormed Normandy; he hoped “Red Tails’’ would do the same for a dying generation of African-American patriots.
As they wheeled Saunders out of church, Willie Shellman, head of the Tuskegee Airmen in New England, stood well behind the pallbearers, whispering a story.
“I got a call from a teacher in Shrewsbury last week who said he wanted to show his history class ‘Red Tails’ and have one of our guys talk to the students,’’ he said. “I said we’d be glad to. Then he called me back and said the school principal had an issue.’’
Shellman looked out as they loaded his old friend’s casket into the back of a hearse.
“The principal didn’t want just one class to see it. They want the whole school to see it, and for our guys to talk to the kids after,’’ he said.
“And I thought of Willis. Willis would love that. He would absolutely love it.’’