One of the last surviving members of the original Tuskegee Airmen has died at the age of 99.
Jerry T. Hodges Jr., the last Tuskegee aviator born in Memphis, Tennessee He reportedly died in California on Thursday.
In the 1940s, approximately 992 pilots went on to the segregated Tuskegee program. Hodges was one of about 500 people who completed training but did not go to the front lines, he said. arkansas state encyclopedia.
The aviator was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 2012.
Hodges was born in Memphis on June 29, 1925. According to his Hall of Fame biography, the family moved to Arkansas and settled on a farm in Heath.
After attending a single-sex high school for two years, he transferred to another school and graduated as valedictorian in 1943.
He then attended historically black Hampton University. After three semesters in Virginia (now Hampton University), he left to pursue his dream of becoming a military pilot.
After serving in a group of legendary black aviators, Hodges was discharged from the military in 1946 and went on to earn degrees in business, accounting, and finance from the University of Southern California (USC).
“He subsequently earned an additional degree in financial planning from the College of Financial Planning in Denver, Colorado,” his biography reads.
Hodges then became vice president of Property Casualty Insurance Company, one of the first black-owned insurance companies in California. By 1965, he opened and expanded his own accounting business.
Later in his career, he co-founded the Los Angeles chapter of the David Rockefeller Interracial Council on Business Opportunities and served as chairman of the board of the Tuskegee Airman Scholarship Foundation.
Hodges is survived According to HBCU Buzz, his wife, Lillian Reed Hodges, and their two daughters.
