ShareThisBy MIKE HARDEN
Scripps Howard News Service
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
With each passing year, the ranks of Jesse Brown's contemporaries thin a little more.
Tom Hudner and Bill Koenig, Navy pilots who flew combat missions over Korea with Brown, are still around, though each has passed fourscore years.
Forrest Flewellen, who knew Brown from the Naval ROTC program at Ohio State University, recalls losing his friend.
"He was such an exemplary person," Flewellen said recently. "He was the first black naval aviator in this nation's history; the first one to die in combat."
Brown, who died of injuries when his F4U4 Corsair went down near Korea's Chosin Reservoir in 1950, was saluted last week when a plaque citing his military achievements was unveiled at Converse Hall at Ohio State. A day later, another plaque honoring Brown was placed on the wall of the recently opened Naval Aviation Monument Park in Virginia Beach, Va.
"I am named for my grandfather," recalled Jessica Knight of the pilot who broke the color barrier in Navy aviation. "His name, Jesse Leroy, turned quite nicely, I must admit, into Jessica Leroyce.
"It dawned on me the other day that I am now, at 24, the same age as my grandfather when he was killed in the Korean war. I think about all the things I have not achieved and the sacrifices I have not had to make."
The man for whom Jessica is named was born in Hattiesburg, Miss., in 1926 and was valedictorian of his high-school class.
"Some of his friends back home discouraged him from coming to Ohio State," Flewellen said. "They said, 'You don't want to go up north to a school like that which gives scant attention to black people.'" But Brown wanted to be in the clouds. To do it, he was willing to work full time loading railcars in Columbus when he was not attending class.
"He was making a 3.8 GPA in his engineering courses," Flewellen said.
But Brown was impatient. He took a break from his studies to earn his Navy wings. He was assigned to an aircraft carrier in the Pacific.
"I was his wingman and roommate," Bill Koenig recalled by phone from his Virginia home. He noted of the day Brown died. "We were flying about 30 miles southeast of the Chosin Reservoir. We were following a mountain road when Jesse said, 'I'm losing power.'" Brown crash-landed on a snow-covered slope not far from a high concentration of enemy troops.
Tom Hudner, also flying the mission, brought his own Corsair around to the slope, made a belly landing and rushed to the crash site.
"The smoke coming out indicated that there was something that could burst into flame," Hudner said. "I thought it was just a matter of pulling him out of the cockpit and waiting for the helicopter to get us out."
But Brown's leg was pinned in the smoking wreckage.
The temperature was well below zero. Light was fading. Shock from Jesse's injuries and hypothermia were taking a toll.
"He was very quiet," Hudner said. "He might have been fighting to stay conscious. The only thing he said was that, if anything happened to let his wife know how much he loved her."
His widow was given his Distinguished Flying Cross.
Hudner, for putting himself in grievous peril to try to save Brown, ultimately was awarded a Medal of Honor.
"Jesse was a real trailblazer in what he did," Hudner said. "We can't put ourselves in his shoes. It was obvious that he was living in a very difficult time.
"Yet it wasn't that he was just the first black to wear Navy wings. It was a lot deeper than that."
(Mike Harden is a columnist at the Columbus Dispatch in Ohio. E-mail mharden(at)dispatch.com.)
