VNAIC HOSPICE PATIENT WAS ALSO A TUSKEGEE AIRMAN

Luther Jefferson Sr., a patient of the VNAIC’s Victorville Hospice branch, passed away recently at home. Jefferson, a retired 88-year-old chief master sergeant in the U.S. Air Force, was one of the original World War II Tuskegee Airmen, an all-black group credited with paving the way for the integration of the military. Drafted at 19 in March of 1943, Jefferson logged more than 5000 hours in various aircraft, including P-40 fighters and B-25 bombers while stationed in Italy. According to family members, Jefferson maintained a relentlessly positive attitude, determined work ethic and forgiving nature – this in spite of growing up on a Louisiana sharecropper’s farm in the 1920′s, walking 18 miles to get to the nearest school for black children each week, then making the trek back home on weekends to toil away the weekend, working on his father’s farm. His daughter Yvonne Atkinson said “He had the idea that ‘Live a good life and you can win’”.  A Victorville resident since being stationed at George Air Force base in the 1960′s, Jefferson mostly kept quiet about his trailblazing experience as a Tuskegee Airman, though his family has now discovered he’d been writing down reflections in the form of memoirs and material to be read at his funeral, which was held January 25th in Victorville. “I ask for neither glory nor praise, and I am not bragging or complaining. I’m just explaining the situation,” Jefferson wrote in a personal account. “We had to fight on two fronts. Because the military was not integrated, we had to fight the American society and government to have the right to fight our European and Japanese enemies. We wanted to be treated as full-fledged Americans during World War II; we wanted to fight. But most of all we wanted to world to know that we were Americans, in every sense of the word”. He retired from his post at George Air Force Base in 1972, capping off his career as one of the first black chief master sergeants. Jefferson said “I have learned that none of us can do anything about the past; but because of the past, we can learn and build a better future.” In lieu of flowers, the Jefferson family asks that donations go to the Visiting Nurse Association of the Inland Counties’ Victorville Hospice, located at 12421 Hesperia Road, Suite 11, Victorville, CA, 92395.

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