Being a nerd is not such a bad thing, retired Lt. Col. Alexander Jefferson told a group of children yesterday afternoon at the East Winston Heritage Center.
"A nerd is the best thing in the world," he said. "I was a nerd. No one wants to be a dummy."
After Jefferson, a member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen, finished his talk of about 45 minutes, several of the children told him that they wanted to be nerds, too.
Jefferson, 88, stressed to the kids how he used his college education to become an Army fighter pilot in World War II. He also showed them a photo of him in Army uniform when he was in his early 20s.
"Didn't I look sharp?" he asked the children. "I had a lot of fun."
Jefferson patiently talked to them and 40 adults about his experiences as a Tuskegee Airman and a prisoner during the war. The children are enrolled at the Best Choice Center.
Jefferson was among 1,000 black pilots trained at the segregated Tuskegee Army Airfield in Alabama. They were known as the Tuskegee Airmen, and they escorted American bombers on missions to Germany, France, Greece and Romania.
The rear of their planes was painted red. Their unit, the 332nd Fighter Group, was known as the "Red Tails." About 200 Tuskegee Airmen are still living. Jefferson explained to the children that the Army gave him an airplane and paid him $225 a month to serve as a pilot.
He then told them about how he was shot down by German anti-aircraft fire in southern France in August 1944 while he was flying a strafing mission over a radar station.
After his P-51 fighter plane was hit and caught fire, he managed to bail out.
"When I jumped out, I remembered seeing the tail go by with all of that fire," Jefferson said.
He jumped at a low altitude and landed in trees, he said. He was captured by the German gun crew that shot him down. The Tuskegee pilots flying with Jefferson didn't see him bail out of his plane, and they believed that he had been killed.
The U.S. Army Air Force initially told his parents, who lived in Detroit, that he had died in action. A month later, the Red Cross sent them a telegram that said that Jefferson was alive and a captive in a German prisoner-of-war camp.
That part of Jefferson's story apparently confused some of the children, who repeatedly asked him how he was shot down and if he was killed.
"I got news for you -- I never died," he said as the children laughed.
Jefferson said that he got scratches and bruises during his ordeal. The German soldiers who captured him saluted him when they noticed the gold bar on his shoulder. Jefferson was a second lieutenant at the time.
He was taken to Stalag Luft III near Munich, Germany. There were 10,000 white officers and three other black officers at the camp, he said.
His captors treated him as an officer and a gentleman, and he was never mistreated, Jefferson said. He was one of 32 Tuskegee Airmen who were prisoners of war.
Nine months later, his prison camp was liberated by the U.S. Third Army, he said. When he returned to the Unites States after the war, he and other black veterans endured racism and discrimination.
Before he joined the military, Jefferson received a bachelor's degree in chemistry and biology from Clark University in Atlanta and a master's degree in organic chemistry from Howard University.
He eventually landed a job as a science teacher at an elementary school in Detroit. For 35 years, he worked as a teacher and an assistant principal before he retired in 1979. In 1969, he retired as a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserves.
In 2005, Jefferson wrote the book Red Tail Captured and Red Tail Free. He signed some copies of his book for the adults at the heritage center.
"We had a job to do," he said of his experiences as a pilot. "There was a war."
jhinton@wsjournal.com
727-7299
Retired Lt. Col. Alexander Jefferson will sign his book from noon to 2 p.m. today at Special Occasions, 112 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
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