Tuskegee Airmen

Luther H. Smith Jr., 89, who flew 132 missions in Europe as a Tuskegee Airman before being captured near the end of World War II, died Wednesday at Bryn Mawr Hospital. Capt. Smith, of Villanova, survived the war to have a long career as an aerospace engineer for General Electric Co. His death was attributed to complications from an infection. "My personal good fortune took a turn, on Friday, Oct. 13, 1944," he wrote in 2001. That day, the engine of his P-51 Mustang caught fire, and he bailed out over Yugoslavia.

While hundreds of onlookers waited patiently yesterday afternoon to honor a contingent of Tuskegee Airmen, an all-black air corps that served during World War II, two veterans stood together and talked about meeting 54 years ago. In a side room away from the crowd that gathered at Gloucester County College to pay tribute to the Airmen, as part of the college's Black History Month program, World War II veterans George Watson and Frank X. Connolly...

On a shady patch of grass, yards from the All Wars Memorial to Colored Soldiers and Sailors, Ronald Richardson, dressed in a gray jacket that looked almost like a Civil War uniform, stood tall and erect as a mountain. He saluted while a trumpeter played "Taps" and a military honor guard lay two wreaths at the monument Monday near Logan Circle on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. "My family was in World War II. My Uncle Dan, may he rest in peace, and my [other] uncle, he was in World War I. They're all gone now," said Richardson, 74, tears welling up in his eyes.

Services were held yesterday for Dr. Bascom S. Waugh, 83 - a Camden physician who made house calls for more than 50 years and was Cooper Hospital- University Medical Center's first African American physician. A Haddonfield resident since 1952, Dr. Waugh died last Thursday at Cooper of heart failure after a long illness. He had practiced medicine at his South Camden office until becoming ill last June. Dr. Waugh "was very dedicated to providing services to the community of Camden," said his daughter, Dr. Dyann Waugh of Hyattsville, Md. "He never considered moving his office anywhere else.

Herbert Smith Harris, 76, of Trevose, one of the renowned Tuskegee Airmen, retired Air Force Reserves major and groundbreaking salesman, died May 26 at Majestic Oak Nursing Home in Warminster. Born in Philadelphia, he graduated with the 166th class of Central High School in 1936. At Central, he made top grades, ran track and had an after- school job. Later Mr. Harris studied architecture at Drexel University. In 1942, he joined the Army Air Corps' training program for black fliers at a base in Tuskeegee, Ala. In 1943, he completed training as a pilot on the P- 40 fighter plane and the AT-6 pilot training plane, then served at Lockbourne Air Base in Ohio.

Cuba Gooding Jr. is one of the veteran Tuskegee Airmen. That is, the actor plays a base commander in the new, George Lucas -produced Red Tails, an action-packed account of the daring aerial exploits of the famed all-black flying unit of World War II. And Gooding was one of the young African American aces who took to the skies to shoot down Nazis in 1995's HBO drama The Tuskegee Airmen . Both films show...

Today is Jackie Robinson Day throughout Major League Baseball. To honor the famed Brooklyn Dodgers infielder's breaking of baseball's color barrier 60 years ago today, the Phillies and visiting Houston Astros will salute Robinson most vividly at Citizens Bank Park. All uniformed personnel will wear jerseys with 42, Robinson's number, which was retired throughout the game 10 years ago. The Phillies will mark the anniversary in other ways before the 1:35 p.m. game. They include: A salute to Bill Cash, Mahlon Duckett, Stanley Glenn and Harold Gould, the four living members of the Philadelphia Stars, the Negro league team that played here from 1934 to 1950 and won the 1934 Negro National League pennant.

The Rev. Buford S. Washington, M.D., 77, a former state health commissioner, pastor, missionary, ophthalmologist and Tuskegee Airman, died Saturday. Appointed commissioner of special health programs for Pennsylvania in 1975 and 1976, he served as acting secretary of health in 1979. For many people, a state commissionership might be the crowning achievement of a lifetime, but for Mr. Washington, it was only one of many accomplishments. A deeply spiritual man of diverse interests and remarkable energy, he was for the last six years pastor of New Jerusalem Baptist Church.

Eleanor Sutton Wiggins, 89, a retired educator who began her teaching career in the one-room schoolhouse that she attended as a child and worked to increase the ranks of minority teachers, died Tuesday at her Erial home after a long illness. In a career that spanned nearly four decades, Mrs. Wiggins held jobs in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Alabama, where she taught the children of the Tuskegee Airmen of World War II fame, said her daughter, Francyne Wiggins. Born in Atlanta, Mrs. Wiggins grew up in Weirton, W.Va.

DeReef Jamison and his niece Amadea Clement, 9, walked into a booth of African American inventions yesterday and were floored by what they saw - and learned. "It shows that without these inventions, America wouldn't be the same place," Jamison, 29, said after seeing exhibits showing that blacks created everyday items such as the refrigerator and the pencil sharpener. Yesterday was the first day of the National African American Cultural Expo at the Convention Center, promoting black culture and history through book readings, vendor booths and the Black Inventions Museum.