Milton Pitts Crenchaw

LITTLE ROCK — Milton Crenchaw really doesn’t talk that much about his career as one of the original Tuskegee Airmen, the first Arkansan to be called by that name.

And that is a bit surprising. The recent release of Red Tails, the George Lucas produced feature film about the airmen; Black History Month in February; and a new book that mentions him combine to make Crenchaw a media darling precisely because of that career.

What Crenchaw - tall, dignified, looking younger than his 93 years - does talk about quite a bit is his favorite Bible character, Abraham, whose life journey he often compares to his own.

If you visit Crenchaw in the cozy den of his friend Marian Torrence’s home in midtown Little Rock, he is happy to show off the many, many mementos of his career - copies of the articles in which he has been featured, Tuskegee Airmen photos and artists’ depictions, photos of him in his airman days, pictures of his family and fliers of recent speaking engagements. There are also mementos of his considerable honors and awards, such as his 1998 induction into the Arkansas Aviation Hall of Fame, 2007 induction into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame and 2007 recognition by Gov. Mike Beebe.

He doesn’t mind talking - “When you come from a jack-leg preacher,” the easiest thing to do is talk, he jokes. He’ll wax philosophical on many things, darting quickly from subject to subject - the order of things in the world (“Everything has a pattern. It’s not just out there.”); science, including biology and astronomy; and crime. Observations on race and how far the black man has come. And more than a few humorous sayings and observances, accompanied by a twinkle in those piercing but kind eyes.

Anyone who listens to him will likely hear that he was a longtime Sunday School teacher, hence the many references to Abraham. And anyone becoming acquainted with him will soon find out his advice to young and old:

“Obey God, and get the best education you can possibly get, wherever you go.”

Crenchaw, the last living supervising squadron commander of the Tuskegee Airmen, has spent the first part of the year giving television and newspaper interviews as well as speaking at schools, colleges and churches. When Red Tails - which didn’t name him as a character - premiered Jan. 20, Crenchaw spoke before and after an early-evening showing at the Rave Motion Pictures Colonel Glenn 18 in Little Rock.

And, having observed his 93rd birthday the week before, he then held court at a birthday reception in the theater’s party room. The event was hosted by Edmond Davis, a historian and class facilitator at Arkansas Baptist College, contributor to the entry on Crenchaw in The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture and author of Pioneering African-American Aviators Featuring the Tuskegee Airmen of Arkansas (Aviate Through Knowledge Productions, $15 at aviatethroughknowledge.com), for which Crenchaw was the inspiration.

Davis has known Crenchaw for more than seven years, having met him at Philander Smith College in February 2005.

“My father told me all about the Tuskegee Airmen, and I found it interesting as well as an opportunity to finally meet one,” Davis says. “I thought he was a pilot that saw action overseas, but it turned out that he trained ... cadets to become Red Tails and other distinguished American aviators.” Davis’ interest was further whetted by what, at the time, was the lack of information readily available online about Crenchaw.

Co-founder, with his wife, Monica, of Aviate Through Knowledge Productions LLC, Davis now acts as a liaison to Crenchaw. He admires most the fact that Crenchaw, as a Tuskegee Airman, “stayed the course.”

“He did not let any discrimination, bigotry, racism or unfair treatment throw him off or make him a less effective instructor/facilitator.”

Named after his grandfather, Crenchaw was one of three children of Ethel and the Rev. Joseph C. Crenchaw. Ethel Crenchaw was a hairdresser who “did the white folks’ hair all of her life,” her son recalls.

Joseph Crenchaw worked as a tailor on Little Rock’s Ninth Street in the early 1900s and led the Little Rock chapter of the NAACP at the time of the 1957 Central High School desegregation crisis, when Daisy Bates was state NAACP president. Milton Crenchaw worked at his father’s shop before and after World War II.

Crenchaw graduated from Dunbar High School in 1937 with no idea he’d do what he ended up doing. He thought perhaps he’d go into teaching. He went to auto mechanics school at Dunbar Junior College, earning a teaching certificate. In 1939, he went to the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama to study mechanical engineering. He went “not knowing that I was going to be on a fantastic journey.”

The same year Crenchaw went to Tuskegee was the year that the events that would make him part of history were put in motion. According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas and a Tuskegee Airmen history at website brebru.com, representatives of the National Airmen Association, an organization of black pilots, met in 1939 with then-Sen. Harry S. Truman.

The senator went on to help sponsor a bill that would allow black pilots to serve in the Army Air Corps’ Civilian Pilot Training Program. A year before Pearl Harbor - December 1940 - the air corps gave the War Department a plan to form an all black fighter squadron as an experiment. The 99th Pursuit Squadron was formed the following month.

Crenchaw’s college career would be interrupted. He took a flying course at Tuskegee, became a pilot and then, on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He went on to become part of the Civilian Pilot Training Program and, as he puts it, was told to start training pilots.

“We took a course down in Gunter Air Field,” now Maxwell Air Force Base-Gunter Annex near Montgomery, Ala., Crenchaw says. “We started flying down there first. And it was kind of an expense going there every day down from Montgomery, so they opened up a field at Tuskegee” for the airmen to be trained. The Tuskegee Army Air Field officially opened July 19, 1941.

“And the rest of it started just coming off real easy [and] fast,” Crenchaw says.

Was he nervous? Afraid? Reluctant? No, “just happy” to do it, he says. He cites how Abraham was told by God to leave Ur and go to another land, and was promised that he would be greatly blessed and be the father of many nations. When God tells you to do something, “you just do it,” Crenchaw says.

TAKING FLIGHT

And how was that very first airplane ride for Crenchaw - who beforehand had never been on an airplane or at an airport?

“It was kind of like if a guy takes [another] guy in a submarine,” Crenchaw says. “If he’s never been down under the water [he] just holds his breath and wants to know ... what fool made him take this up.”

After all, Crenchaw says, he wasn’t that far removed from the pre- “horseless carriage” days into which his father was born ... or the slavery into which his grandfather was born.

Again he goes into philosopher mode: “People are living just from day to day. Whatever you’re doing you take advantage of what conditions are like,” he says. “And as you go through life, you pick up a whole lot of things.”

According to Davis’ contribution in The Encyclopedia of Arkansas, Crenchaw got his civilian pilot license, then earned his commercial pilot certificate on Aug. 11, 1941. He became a primary civilian flight instructor and served as one of the two original supervising squadron commanders under chief flight instructor Charles A. Anderson. Among the many pilots and cadets he trained between 1941 and 1946 was another Arkansas-born Tuskegee Airman, Lt. Col. Woodrow “Woody” Crockett.

The airmen - led by Gen. Benjamin O. Davis Jr. and referred to as “Red Tails” because the tails on their planes were painted red - took their place in history. Made up of four fighter squadrons, including the 99th, that were merged to become known as the 332nd Fighter Group, the Tuskegee Airmen destroyed military targets in Italy before serving as bomber escorts in Europe.

Meanwhile, Crenchaw married the former Ruby Hockenhull (now deceased) on Dec. 22, 1942. The couple had four children. Among them is St. Paul-area veterinarian Dr. Milton Crenshaw, (spelled with an “s” instead of two “c’s”) who graduated from high school when he was 15 and earned his degree in veterinary medicine at 22.

In 1947, his Army days over, Crenchaw came back to his hometown and visited with M.L. Harris, then president of Philander Smith College. Crenchaw wanted to offer some piloting courses through the college - a curriculum to teach students to do crop-dusting. Harris went for the idea, and the pioneering flight school was born. Classes were held at Central Flying Service at Adams Field, now Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport/Adams Field.

In addition, Crenchaw was employed as a crop-duster by the flying service. “I saw white guys out there making that good money and I asked them about letting me do some crop-dusting ... not realizing that in ’53 I’d be going to Oklahoma teaching ... how to spot artillery.”

Indeed, from 1953 until 1972, he worked as a civilian flight instructor for a handful of air bases. At Fort Sill, Okla., he trained Army pilots at the 31st Air Defense Artillery Brigade.

Citing President Harry Truman’s July 1948 executive order to end racial segregation in the armed forces, Crenchaw says he was sent to Fort Sill “to integrate the services. All white. I was the only Negro there, teaching military people again.” Later he trained pilots at Fort Stewart, Ga., and became the first black flight instructor at Alabama’s Camp Rucker, now Fort Rucker. His only response to the question about the racial bias he must have suffered in those days: “You [took] all kinds of crap.”

A FULL LIFE

In 1983, Crenchaw retired from his position as a civilian flight instructor for the military. These days, he’s still busy - reaping honors. He joined about 300 other Tuskegee Airmen in Washington in 2007 to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by then-President George W. Bush. Also that year, he was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame. In 2009 he was among the Tuskegee Airmen who attended the inauguration of President Barack Obama.

Crenchaw spends his leisure time with Torrence, the widow of his good friend Andrew P. Torrence. A fellow Little Rock native, Torrence was longtime president of Tennessee State University in Nashville and later provost of Tuskegee Institute.

Marian Torrence describes Crenchaw as a kind and compassionate man of faith. “He believes in treating everybody right,” she says.

The two became close after their spouses died. “When I first met him he didn’t talk about himself much; he didn’t say anything about being a Tuskegee Airman,” she says. “Now, when he meets somebody, he tells them he’s a Tuskegee Airman. He’s enjoying the accolades now.” But, she assures, “it doesn’t go to his head. ... It hasn’t inflated his ego. He’s still very humble.”

Although he’s 93, Crenchaw stays active, trimming his own hedges. And he still drives, taking Torrence to St. Louis several times a year for follow-up care for an injured arm on which she’d had surgery at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

“I always tell Milton his flight training helped him,” she says. “He scans the horizon. His eyes are never [just] focused in front. He’s scanning.”

No longer a Sunday School teacher, Crenchaw visits various churches. Everywhere he goes, somebody wants him to speak, he says.

Not a problem. Again, he’s a talker ... and a true Will Rogers. When he meets somebody, it’s like they’ve been friends all along.

He’s quick to share his mantras to, and about, young people: “Obey God, and get a good education ... like my parents told me. If we can get that out to these kids, then what we do is eliminate so much of the trouble that people are having. And what we’re trying to do is keep the people from making all [these] prisons.”

It seems he got through to one young man who, as Crenchaw wrapped up a recent speaking engagement, asked him, “Mr. Crenchaw, can I come up here and shake your hand, because if I didn’t see you I wouldn’t believe it. You have lived a fantastic life.”

Crenchaw would agree to that.

“I look back and say, ‘What a life God gave me.’”

SELF PORTRAIT Milton Crenchaw

DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH Jan. 13, 1919, Little Rock ON BEING INTERVIEWED You got people that will ask you, “What’s your sex preference?” I’m 90-something years of age and a guy’s got the nerve to ask me “What do you like?” ... and you know he’s ... crazy, but he’s opened himself to ask you some fool question.

ON BEING A MAN The average person will look at you and the first thing he thinks about is [if] you’re not one of those he-men that wants to kick tails and smoke and drink certain things,you must be something funny. ... But all-in-all what we try to do is be as polite as we can to everybody and let you believe anything what you want.

ON WOMEN In my estimation, women are the nicest things God made.

ON KEEPING TRACK OF THE MEMENTOS OF HIS LIFE I keep it all together to let people know that I’m not fibbing. People will take it for granted that you are a lying [person] unless you’ve got some proof.

ON TEACHING The hardest thing ... for teachers is to be an example-setter and you can only do that by doing it, you can only teach by doing what you think is right.

ON THE IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION You only think by getting educated. ... If we can just teach that, then my living was not in vain. I can die a good boy and say, ‘‘Lord thank you because I sure had a wonderful time here.’’

ON RACIAL PROGRESS I’ve seen a whole lot of changes [for blacks] in this country - from slavery to the president’s house. Isn’t that amazing?

ONE PHRASE TO SUM ME UP Obedient (to God).