One of the last surviving members of the original Tuskegee Airmen has died at the age of 99.
Jerry T. Hodges Jr., who was the last Tuskegee Airman born in Memphis, Tennessee, according to reports, passed away Thursday in California.
Around 992 pilots advanced through the segregated Tuskegee program in the 1940s. Hodges was one of approximately 500 who completed the training but did not go to the front lines, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
The airman was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 2012.
Hodges was born in Memphis on June 29, 1925. His family moved to Arkansas and settled on a farm in Heth, his Hall of Fame biography states.
After attending a segregated high school for two years, he transferred to a different school where he ended up graduating as the valedictorian in 1943.
He then went to historically black college Hampton Institute in Virginia (now Hampton University) for three semesters before leaving to pursue his dream of becoming a military pilot.
After serving in the legendary black airmen group, Hodges was discharged in 1946, after which he earned degrees in business and accounting and finance at the University of Southern California (USC).
“He later received an additional degree in financial planning from the College of Financial Planning in Denver, Colorado,” his biography states.
Hodges then became vice president of Casualty Insurance Company, one of the first black-owned insurance businesses in California. By 1965, he had opened and expanded his own accounting business.
Later in his career he cofounded the Los Angeles Branch of the David Rockefeller Interracial Council on Business Opportunity and chaired the Tuskegee Airmen Scholarship Foundation.
Hodges is survived by his wife, Lillian Reed Hodges, and their two daughters, according to HBCU Buzz.
