One of the country’s finest fighter pilots who fought vigilantly in Europe in World War II has died. Harold H. Brown, a member of the famed Tuskegee Airman died on January 12th in an Ohio nursing home. He was 98 years old, according to his wife, Dr. Marsha Bordner, who survives him.
Mr. Brown was one of ten surviving members of the group of African American fighter pilots who joined the Air Force in World War II after being trained in Tuskegee, Alabama. Mr. Brown was only 19 years old when he became a pilot.
Born in Minnesota, Mr. Brown talked about becoming a pilot when he was in elementary school. In high school he saved money that he earned from an after-school job to pay for flying lessons.
Shortly after graduating from high school, he applied to the program that trained young African American men to fly combat planes. Two years later he graduated as a second lieutenant.
Lt. Brown, who also served during the Korean War, was sent to fight in the European theater. He performed admirably before he had to abandon a failing aircraft in a bombing raid over Austria, a German ally during World War II.
He was captured while hiding in a field and was surrounded by a group of people from the small town that he had just bombed. The locals attempted to hang him before a local police official informed them that Lt. Brown was a prisoner of war and should be incarcerated. He kept them from killing the airman.
Lt. Brown was confined in a prison camp until American troops liberated the town and removed him from the prison where he had remained since his capture.
When Lt. Brown returned to the states, he turned his attention to education, earning a mathematics degree from Ohio University. Years later he earned a master’s degree and a doctorate in education from Ohio State University in Columbus.
Having retired from the military in 1965, Lt. Brown worked as a college instructor, and as a senior university administrator, once serving as electronics department chair at Columbus State Community College. Lt. Brown also worked as a flight instructor.
A recipient of the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007, Lt. Brown was inducted into the Minnesota Aviation Hall of Fame in 2020. He once said that the success of the Tuskegee Airman was not Black history. “It is American history,” he said.
Lt. Brown is survived by his wife; one daughter, Karen; one son, Jonathan and two grandsons.
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