Denver Native Was 93

Denver native John Mosley, a Tuskegee Airman who rose to the rank of Lt. Colonel in the U.S. Air Force, passed away Friday at the age of 93.

The Denver Post reports that Mosley had been a National Merit Scholar and class valedictorian at Manual High School, then enrolled at Colorado State College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts. He became the first black football player at the school that became Colorado State University.

He also became the first African American in Advance ROTC at the college. At one time, he had been told he had a heart murmur by a doctor at Fitzsimons Army Hospital in Denver, which he thought was false.

Mosley reportedly paid for his own flight physical and started flight training on his own. When he was drafted into the Army, he was initially sent to a segregated artillery unit at Fort Sill, OK. After protesting that assignment to Congress, he was eventually assigned to the Tuskegee Airmen, but only after more pressure was brought by a local black-owned newspaper and the White House.

Mosley continued in the Air Force after WWII, flying bombing missions over North Vietnam and serving as an operations officer in Thailand. He retired from the Air Force in 1970 as a special assistant to the undersecretary in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in Washington and returned to Denver.

(Public domain image)

FMI: http://tuskegeeairmen.org/