"Now, after the war’s over, and wars have a way of ending, I came back to school, and I went to graduate school at T—at Syracuse, Syracuse University. And I flew with the New York Air National Guard as a radar observer, and that was a…

"Our group, B-25, was supposed to go in the Pacific, and we were supposed to fly a mission from some island near…Japan onto Japan to the Japan mainland, that’s what we were supposed to do. And this thing got so bad, so very bad, that the…

"Were there dangers? Flying is risky. It’s always risky. We had a saying that…there were old pilots and there were bold pilots, so you have to be careful. They says, there were never any old, bold pilots. If you’re too bold, you never get…

"I just about knew it was gonna happen. I was the right age. I was about…18, 19 at that time, and…I felt I was gonna go. I did learn, however, that if you volunteer, sometime you can pick the service that you want, and when I got to…

"After high school in Henry County, I learned the Tuskegee would offer people jobs. They would give ’em work scholarships, and if you would come to Tuskegee and wan—and you were willing to work, you could just about work your way through…

"We didn’t have a high school, we had tenth grade, and when you finished the tenth grade, that was the end of the line. Now the other school system across town where I couldn’t go, of course they had high school. So at the end of tenth grade,…

"Well, Eufaula is on the bluff of the Chattahoochee River, and it’s called “The Bluff City.” It was a small town when I lived there, about 6,000 people, and it was about 50% black and 50% white. My—my father, my grandfather was a janitor at…

"I was born in Prichard, Alabama, February 8th, 1922. I had one brother and two sisters. I lived with them for about 3 or 4—maybe 8 years, and then it was decided that…I should live with my grandparents. You must remember, in the early days,…

"When I got home, Evelyn came over to the house to see me. I didn’t know she knew I was at home. Somebody told her. And anyway, she said, 'You ought to go to church tomorrow.' And I said, 'Yeah.' So we went to church, and we…

"Then we had VE [Victory in Europe] Day. And that’s a funny one. I had my little motor scooter that I had mechanics build for me, that I designed in Paris. I was riding up and down the streets of Paris on VE-Day with a beautiful young lady…