Harry Stewart Jr., one of last 2 remaining Tuskegee World War II veterans, dies at 100

Yahoo

05-02-2025

Feb. 5 (UPI) -- Retired Lt. Col. Harry Stewart Jr., one of the last two remaining members of the 355 original Tuskegee Airmen during World War II, has died. He was 100.
Stewart died in his home in Bloomfield, Mich., on Sunday, the Tuskegee Airmen National Historical Museum in Detroit confirmed. No service arrangements were announced.
Lt. Col. George Hardy remains the only surviving pilot of the segregated all-Black wing of the United States Army Air Force. They were part of the 332nd Fighter Group, which was known as Red Tails" for their plane's distinctive coloring .
"We are deeply saddened by his passing and extend our condolences to his family and friends around the world," said Brian Smith, president and CEO of the Tuskegee Airmen National Historical Museum in Detroit.
"Harry Stewart was a kind man of profound character and accomplishment with a distinguished career of service he continued long after fighting for our country in World War II."
The museum is a repository for oral and written history of the Tuskegee Airmen and said it has the largest collection of Airmen artifacts in the world.
Stewart was among the first 1,007 Black Army pilots in the 1940s trained at the segregated Tuskegee Army Airfield in Alabama.
He earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for his bravery escorting U.S. bombers during World War II and his heroic actions in combat. He flew in 43 missions.
He is one of four Tuskegee Airmen shot down by three enemy aircraft in a single day.
In addition, he also was part of the team who won the Air Force's first Top Gun Aerial Combat competition in 1949.
Despite their feats, the Black pilots still encountered racism after the war.
In a 2019 interview with the American Veterans Center, Stewart recalled interviewing for several commercial airline pilot jobs in the 1950s.
"I was not hired. And the reason was that they were not hiring any African American pilots or crew members at the time," Stewart said.
Stewart started at what he called "the bottom" in aviation -- as a baggage handler at New York City's Pennsylvania Station.
He later graduated with a master's degree in mechanical engineering in 1963 from New York University. He was vice president at Detroit's ANR Pipeline Co. until he retired.
Stewart, who was born on July 4, 1924, in Newport News, Va.
Despite suffering from polio as a child that left his right calf partially paralyzed, Stewart enlisted at 18 and was accepted into the Army Air Corps in 1943. He earned his pilot's license a year later.
"When the Army Air Corps said that they would recant and they would build a field, but it would have to be just for the Negro trainees there, I was willing to accept that in order to go ahead and get my wings," Stewart told Friends of the National World War II Memorial in a 2024 interview. "That was the prize as far as I was concerned. I was frankly willing to do anything to go ahead and get my wings.
"That's not also to say that I didn't have a strong streak of patriotism. I was a patriot, but I was also willing to turn my face the other way when it came to segregated training."
He is survived by his daughter.