Never mind.  I figured out what the problem was.  After I noticed that httpd was also suffering from the same problem (it would start and run under root as opposed to system_u), I figured it was not my startup script for tomcat.  After some investigation, I discovered that the rpm packages acl and attr were not installed with the minimal install from anaconda (I did a minimal install on both Fedora and CentOS).  I had performed a minimal install by unchecking all packages (yes even the base one) at the package install screen during OS installation.  Supposedly the install performed by anaconda is exactly like the net install image.  Unfortunately, when you do the minimal install, it does not install the rpms acl and attr.  Once I installed both of these rpm packages and rebooted, everything went back to normal.  Thanks for those of you that responded to my cry for help.