Tuskegee Airman Harry Stewart Jr. Dies at 100 in Bloomfield Hills

Lt. Col. Harry S. Stewart Jr. (Government photo)

He was among the last surviving Tuskegee Airmen, the all-Black unit of the Army Air Forces in World War II. He flew 43 missions from late winter 1944 into the spring of 1945.

Harry Stewart Jr., a decorated former combat pilot, died Sunday at his Bloomfield Hills home at age 100, the New York Times reports.

Stewart was born on July 4, 1924, in Newport News, Va.

According to the N.Y. Times, he told his junior high history teacher he wanted to be a pilot, to which she sadly responded: “Colored people aren’t accepted as airline pilots.”

At age 18, he joined the Army Air Corps and in 1943 was sent for training. In June 1944, he  became one of 992 African Americans who completed the advanced flight training program at Tuskegee, Ala., the Times reports.

He retired from the service in 1950. He went on to land a government job in New York in the engineering department. In 1963, after years of night classes, he earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering from New York University, the Times reports, adding:

He went on to work for a series of large corporations, including a natural gas supplier in Detroit. The city became home to many other Tuskegee Airmen.

Mr. Stewart retired to Bloomfield Hills, an affluent Detroit suburb, with his wife, who died in 2015, and his daughter, Lori Stewart, who survives him, along with nieces and nephews.