General Benjamin O. Davis Jr.
General Benjamin O. Davis Jr. who broke color barriers and shattered racial myths as the commander of the Tuskegee Airmen, the pioneering black fighter pilots of World War II, died July 4 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Davis was 89 and had Alzheimer’s disease.
The son of the Army’s first black general, Benjamin Davis Sr., Davis was the first black cadet to graduate from West Point in the 20th century and one of the first black pilots in the military. His leadership of America’s only all-black air unit of World War II helped speed the integration of the Air Force, and in 1954, he became the first black Air Force general. As the leader of dozens of missions, Davis was highly decorated, receiving the Silver Star for a strafing run into Austria and the Distinguished Flying Cross for a bomber escort mission to Munich. He retired from the military in 1970 and later supervised the federal sky marshal program that was designed to quell a rash of airliner hijackings. At the time he left the Air Force as a lieutenant general, wearing three stars, he was the senior black officer in the armed forces. In 1998, President Clinton awarded Davis his fourth star.
Charles P. “Chas” Harral
Popular speaker, pilot examiner, and flight instructor, Charles P. “Chas” Harrel, died June 27 in San Antonio, Texas; he was 62.
Harral safely logged more than 13,000 hours of flight time, gave 9,000 hours of flight instruction, and administered more than 5,000 flight tests for pilot certificates and ratings. He owned and operated a P-51 Mustang and was type-rated in the P-38 Lightning. Harral taught hundreds of aviation safety courses across the United States including many Flight Instructor Refresher Clinics (FIRC) for the AOPA Air Safety Foundation. A memorial Web site has been launched in his honor. See www.aviationspeakers.com/speakers/c-harral.htm
Walter Lee Jones
Walter “Wally” Lee Jones, a crew member on the last flight of the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that dropped the first atom bomb on Japan during WWII, died in San Antonio on June 16; he was 73.
Born in Vanceboro, North Carolina in 1929, Jones developed a love of flying at an early age. While working in the tobacco fields as a young man, he watched planes fly by often and which eventually propelled him to join the Air Force. He had a real passion for flying and had a love of planes.
Jones served as an Air Force navigator on B-52s from 1946-1949 and was a retired Kelly Air Force Base civil servant employee. 9 The fully assembled Enola Gay-named after the mother of Colonel Paul Tibbetts, the pilot on the August 6, 1945 Hiroshima mission-restored by the Smithsonian experts, will be on permanent display at the museum’s new Dulles annex when it opens in late 2003. Jones would be proud of Enola Gay’s final resting place!
Gladys Mae Morrison
Gladys Mae Morrison was inducted into the Arizona Aviation Hall of Fame on May 4, 2002; and on this day she died at age 74 from an inoperable brain tumor.
Morrison’s aviation saga began in 1947 when she received her private license and then earned her instrument, commercial and Airline Transport Pilot (ATP). In 1950, she became a Charter Pilot and went on to become the first woman licensed by the State of California to crop dust with 450hp Stearmans where she had to teach the pilots she hired to pass the Agricultural Department test. During her crop-dusting days, she met and later married one of the crop-dusters, Jim Morrison.
After being the trail blazing aviation professional in California, Morrison returned to her home state of Arizona to fly. In 1982, adding to her already impressive string of accomplishments, she became Arizona’s Flight Instructor of the Year. She was also awarded in 1982 the FAA’s National Flight Instructor of the Year. The National Association of Flight Instructors further honored her as Flight Instructor of the Year. As a charter member of the 99s, Women in Aviation, Morrison gave much of her time to preserving the history of aviation as it fits the needs of the next generation of women pilots starting their careers. She provided educational talks to junior and high school students on careers in aviation. She was a special woman and will be missed!