by Adam Makos
A “chit” was another word for an official letter, in this case requesting admission to flight training. It was common knowledge that the navy needed pilots, because so many veterans had left the service after World War II.
“That’s wonderful, guys,” Tom said. “I hope you get in.”
Carl leaned across the table. “You don’t get it—we want you to apply with us!”
The others studied Tom’s face, eager for his answer.
Tom’s smile dropped and he told his buddies about his airsickness.
They reassured Tom that the airsickness was a onetime thing.
Tom nodded politely, despite his doubts.
“Think about it, Tom,” Carl said. “What’s the first thing you see when a fella approaches you?”
Tom shrugged.
“Gold wings!” Carl said, slapping the left breast of his blazer, where embroidered wings would go.
“Girls see them too,” one of the fellows chimed in.
Tom nodded, but he still wasn’t budging.
Carl advised Tom to forget his dreams of captaining a battleship—the fleet was retiring them all. Tom shook it off. He didn’t really want to command a battleship as his friends assumed. He enjoyed his current work, decoding and sorting classified messages for the Pacific Fleet. Most of the messages concerned the Chinese Civil War, where the Communists were trying to take over China, a nation of 563 million people.
“Aviation is the new battleship,” Carl asserted. “It’s the future.”
He’s got a point, Tom thought. Deep down, Tom knew it might be foolish to spend a military career shuffling papers from a decoding machine. He did appreciate aviation’s appeal—the leather jacket, the goggles, the ability to buzz your friends or pick up girls.
“Any red-blooded ensign needs to at least try,” Carl said. “If not, there’s something wrong with you!”
The others raised their drinks over the center of the table. They looked to Tom, hoping he would raise his own.
Tom still remembered the airsickness vividly—heat climbing up his neck, vision spinning, throat gagging. Tom wanted to say no to his friends but could see the enthusiasm in their eyes. He couldn’t let them down.
Tom raised his glass.
“Okay, I’ll put in my chit, too.”
CHAPTER 7
SO FAR, SO FAST
Two years later, May 1949
Hattiesburg, Mississippi
APPLAUSE SHOOK THE AUDITORIUM of Eureka High School as Jesse finished his speech. Behind the podium, Jesse stood in the dress uniform of the U.S. Navy—golden buttons down the front of a white jacket with black shoulder boards. He was now twenty-two and a newly commissioned ensign. On his right hand he wore a Eureka High class ring.
Jesse nodded to the crowd and struggled to keep his grin from stretching too wide. In front of him sat rows of young black faces, teenage boys and girls dressed in their finest for the baccalaureate ceremony, and behind them stood proud parents and teachers.
Jesse tucked his white hat under his arm and walked off the stage. He wasn’t accustomed to applause, much less from his alma mater. The local newspaper had never announced that he’d earned his navy wings the previous October. There had been black pilots before: The Tuskegee Airmen had done the army proud during World War II. But the navy was a tougher nut to crack. Until Jesse, only whites had flown from carriers.
Credit 7.1
Jesse Brown becomes an officer in April 1949
After the ceremony concluded, Jesse walked down the school’s front steps with the principal, Nathanial Burger, a distinguished man with gray hair and a thin mustache over light brown skin. Jesse settled his officer’s hat onto his head. It was a Sunday, around noon, and the sun radiated over the quiet neighborhood. As Jesse and the principal talked on the sidewalk, families streamed around them, eager to shake Jesse’s hand.
Everyone had wanted to know: How had he earned his wings when countless black cadets before him had failed? In his speech, Jesse had revealed his secret: his flight instructor, Lieutenant Roland Christensen.
During navy flight school Jesse had met Christensen, a former farmboy from Nebraska who’d volunteered to take Jesse—a former farmboy from Mississippi—as his student after other instructors had refused. Before their first flight, Christensen had told Jesse, “Convince me you have what it takes.” He saw Jesse as a man, not as a black man.
A slender young black woman in a yellow sundress emerged from the auditorium. She approached Jesse and hugged him tightly. “That uniform just gives me shivers,” she said. Quiet and graceful, she was twenty-two-year-old Daisy Pearl Brown, Jesse’s bride of a year and a half. They already had a baby girl together, Pamela Elise, who was five months old. Daisy wore her hair in a bun, pulled up and away from her wide, dark eyes.
Credit 7.2
Daisy Brown, then a high school sophomore
Jesse introduced Daisy to Principal Burger, who took her hand and joked, “At this rate you’ll be the wife of the first Negro admiral someday!”
Daisy laughed and thanked him.
“You met at Eureka, didn’t you?” Principal Burger asked Daisy.
“Yes, sir,” Daisy said. She explained that she had been a sophomore when Jesse was a senior. Every day, Daisy and her girlfriends ate lunch near Jesse’s woodshop class.
“I had never dated before,” Jesse added, “but I was an excellent girlwatcher. And she was the one I had my eye on.” Daisy smiled and the principal chuckled.
“I still can’t get past it,” the principal said to himself. “A son of Eureka flying from a carrier!”
Everyone was astonished at how far Jesse had come. For two years he had studied up north at Ohio State. He had chosen to study architectural engineering and paid his way through school by working as a department store janitor some nights and unloading boxcars others. He also got help from some unlikely friends. When Jesse had worked at the Holmes Club, he made six dollars a night. But on his last night of work, the owner passed the hat to raise a scholarship for him. The white soldiers of Camp Shelby tossed in wadded-up bills, the bar owner emptied his wallet, and together they filled the hat with seven hundred dollars—enough for a year’s tuition.
During his second year at Ohio State, Jesse encountered a recruiting poster on a campus bulletin board. The poster showed a naval officer on a carrier deck as a pilot climbed into a fighter plane behind him. It read: CADETS FOR NAVAL AVIATION TAKE THAT SOMETHING EXTRA…HAVE YOU GOT IT? With two years of schooling under his belt, Jesse met the requirements to follow the poster’s instruction: APPLY—NEAREST U.S. NAVY RECRUITING STATION. Jesse was never more thankful to have attended Ohio State. That poster would never have appeared at an all-black school.
Leaning forward, Burger had a question just for Daisy. “Has he taken you flying yet?”
“No, sir,” Daisy said. “And to be quite honest, I’m not too crazy about Jesse’s work—it’s awfully dangerous.”
“We’re working on that,” Jesse said, giving Daisy a gentle nudge.
—
Jesse and Daisy strolled arm in arm through Hattiesburg’s “colored” neighborhood. Bound for the bus stop in the center of the city, they walked past weeping willows, a brick corner store, and an antiques emporium the size of a barn. A gray water tower broke the skyline. Jesse’s folks had been unable to attend the ceremony; Hattiesburg was too far for them to walk.
Jesse and Daisy arrived downtown, where the sunlight streaked across the tops of buildings, casting sharp shadows. Hattiesburg had a fresh face of luxury—Art Deco hotels, classical columns on government buildings, marble banks—thanks to a lumber boom at the turn of the century.
The couple reached the bus stop on the corner of Pine and Main. There were few cars out and the city was calm.
“Perfect day,” Daisy said.
Jesse agreed and kissed her on the cheek.
Some of their best memories had been made around the corner at the Saenger Theatre. They had sat in the balcony
, the colored section, and watched Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart movies. Before Daisy was in his life, Jesse first fell in love at the Saenger—with Lena Horne, the famous black singer who starred in the film Stormy Weather.
The stoplight on the corner turned red.
A car full of teenage boys pulled up, windows rolled down. Out of the corner of his eye, Jesse glimpsed the red glow of a cigarette being held by a white hand. The passenger draped his arm out the window and tossed the cigarette butt. Jesse eyed the passengers.
The light turned green, but the car didn’t budge. No other vehicle was around.
“Hey, nigger,” came a voice from inside the car. “Where ya headed?”
Jesse avoided eye contact. He knew the odds were bad if they wanted to fight—four against one.
“How come you wearing a white man’s uniform?”
Time slowed. The light turned red again.
An arm slapped the side of the car. “You hear me, boy? Where’d you steal that uniform?”
Jesse held Daisy’s hand tighter.
“Stupid nigger, look at me! I asked you a question.”
Jesse looked straight ahead.
“Fine, stay there,” said the voice. “Don’t move a muscle.”
The car peeled away and Jesse followed it with his eyes, remaining tense.
Daisy tried to get her husband to let it go. It was over; they had both endured worse. She reminded Jesse that most people had never seen a black officer before. It was true. Just ten months earlier, President Harry Truman had ordered the integration of the military, yet progress was slow in coming. As of that January, just five of the navy’s forty-five thousand officers were black—and Jesse was one of them.
Jesse checked his watch and looked up, annoyed—the bus was late. All they needed was a lift across town, to the apartment of Daisy’s mother, Addie, who was babysitting baby Pam.
An engine revved hard and loud behind the couple. Jesse and Daisy turned and saw the same car racing back up the road in their direction. Jesse pulled Daisy close. At the corner the car screeched to a stop even though the light was green. Two boys leaned out from the passenger-side windows with fists full of eggs. They threw one egg, then another at Jesse and Daisy, who were too shocked to react. The eggs passed left and right of the couple and exploded against a brick wall in a shower of shells and yolk. Whoops and hollers poured from the car.
More eggs flew through the air. Jesse shielded Daisy with his body, turning his back to the car. An egg flew past Jesse’s officer’s hat, another splattered the concrete. Daisy trembled against Jesse’s shoulder. Another egg flew past Jesse’s white blouse and cracked on the bus stop bench. Another zipped past his leg.
A car’s horn blared. The boys’ whooping trailed away. The horn honked again and again. The boys began cursing someone new. Jesse lifted his head from shielding Daisy and saw that another car had pulled up behind the teenagers. Its driver, an older man, was gesturing angrily. One of the teenagers lowered himself into the car while the other hung out, eager for one last toss. The teenage driver peeled out in front of Jesse and Daisy and his passenger threw one last badly aimed egg, which missed by a mile.
Jesse watched them leave.
Daisy was sobbing, and Jesse comforted her. “Aww, Tootie, it’s over.” “Tootie Fruity” was Daisy’s nickname, first given to her by her father.
“But they tried to hit us!” Daisy choked out the words.
“Yeah, but they missed.” Jesse stroked her back.
A bus’s brakes squealed and Jesse and Daisy felt a hot blast of air as the bus screeched to a stop. The door slammed open.
Jesse removed his hat, walked up the steps, and paid the fares while Daisy waited on the ground. Jesse stepped down and led Daisy to the bus’s rear door, where black passengers boarded. Sometimes a sympathetic driver would tell a black person that he or she could board from the front—if there were few whites aboard—but not today.
Daisy sat against the window and dried her eyes. She glanced at Jesse and saw that his shoulders were tense, his eyebrows narrowed. A stern look filled his eyes as he scratched his blouse’s sleeve with a fingernail. Daisy leaned over and looked closely at his sleeve. A speck of yellow egg yolk had landed on his uniform. She moistened a finger and tried to wipe it off, but the tiny mark stayed.
“I can’t believe it,” Jesse stammered. “Who would want to desecrate the uniform of the United States Navy?”
CHAPTER 8
THE RING
Seven months later, December 2, 1949
Naval Air Station Quonset Point, Rhode Island
A LIGHT BLUE COUPE PURRED along the roadway of the military base. Its engine revved as the driver pulled into the nearly full parking lot beside hangars and a seaside runway. The car looked and sounded like a hot rod, but it was a stock 1939 Pontiac short cab, with thick flares over each wheel and a fast-sloping back.
Tom Hudner steered to his favorite spot in the rear corner of the lot. Now twenty-five years old and a lieutenant junior grade, Tom had been stationed at Quonset Point for two months, flying heavy attack planes called “Skyraiders.” He had overcome his airsickness by simply taking the controls. Flying, instead of riding, made all the difference.
Tom stepped from the coupe and his breath made small clouds in the December air. For weeks now the season’s big radio hit, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” could be heard on every radio station. Suddenly it fit.
Tom slapped a green tent cap over his wavy brown hair and zipped his brown leather jacket over his black tie and tan shirt. Below his leather jacket, Tom wore green slacks and brown shoes. The winter “green” uniform was a pilot’s pride and joy, an ensemble that only aviators could wear. All other naval officers wore navy or tan uniforms and black shoes.
The biting wind blew shoreward, carrying the scent of the sea, and Tom flipped up his jacket’s black fur collar. The clouds above were heavy with snow. Tom liked the Christmas season. He was from Fall River across the bay, and the cold felt familiar and invigorating—yet strangely different this year.
For Tom and his fellow servicemen, a new, uneasy weight blanketed the season of peace. America was at war in a conflict the papers were calling the “Cold War,” because the bullets weren’t yet flying, as in a hot war.
Just seven months earlier, in May 1949, the first clash had been decided. The struggle was over Berlin, the vanquished city that the Allies had divided after World War II, each taking a zone. In June 1948, America, Britain, and France awoke to find Soviet tanks blockading the roads, railways, and canals into their zones. The dictator of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, was besieging the democratic zones to force the 2.2 million German civilians there to submit to communism or starve. But America and the democracies devised a way around the Soviet tanks—by flying over them. For eleven months, American and British aircrews flew three hundred thousand runs of food and supplies into Berlin during an operation coined the “Berlin Airlift.” Ultimately, the Soviets abandoned their roadblocks, but the lasting outcome was clear: The sides of the Cold War had been drawn.*
Tom thrust his hands into his pockets and walked toward the hangar. Beyond, navy fighter planes sat in rows on a concrete parking area with their wings folded upright. Beyond the planes lay a long runway and beyond that the cold waves of Narragansett Bay. The airfield lay on a “neck,” as New Englanders call it, a slab of land jutting into a bay.
As Tom opened the hangar door, a rush of exhilaration hit him. He was reporting to “Fighting 32”—pilot slang for Fighter Squadron 32 (VF-32).
He had made it to fighters.
—
Tom and his new flight leader, Lieutenant Commander Dick Cevoli, leaned over the railing on the hangar’s second floor and gazed at the planes below.
Cevoli was thirty, and 100 percent Italian American. His black hair receded at the temples, but his dark eyes beamed youthful enthusiasm. A grin stretched beneath his long Roman nose.
Although the hangar’s doors were shut, th
e metal rafters trapped the cold. Both men kept on their leather G-1 jackets, the standard gift from the navy after earning their wings. The fur collar on Cevoli’s jacket had turned reddish with time, the sign of a veteran. Before Tom met Cevoli, he had heard rumors in the officers’ club. Apparently, his new flight leader was a former civil engineer turned fighter pilot who had pulled some jaw-dropping heroics in WWII, although Cevoli himself remained tight-lipped about it.
Beneath the bright lights, the planes’ dark blue paint glimmered. Black propellers and radial engines poked out from between folded wings. Maintenance men stood on ladders inspecting engines and others used a crane to lower a propeller.
“Anything I can do to help your transition?” Cevoli asked in his snappy New England accent. He had grown up just five miles from the base.
Tom assured Cevoli that everything was fine. “I didn’t even need to change my parking spot,” he joked.
Credit 8.1
Dick Cevoli and his wife, Grace, on their wedding day in 1946
“Everyone brags about his squadron being the best,” Cevoli said, “but Fighting 32 really is.”
He gestured to the stubby, barrel-shaped planes below. They were F8F Bearcats, the postwar hot rod of propeller planes. A white letter E had been painted on the engine cowling of each Bearcat. Every aviator knew that the E stood for “excellence.” Cevoli explained that ’32 had been rated the top squadron in the fleet that year and would wear the E during their yearlong reign.
Cevoli glanced at Tom’s right hand, where he spotted a thick gold ring. Anyone in the navy could instantly recognize a Naval Academy class ring. A deep blue stone glimmered on top and “1947” was embossed on the side, the year of Tom’s class.