Retired South Orange Dentist was a Tuskegee Airman

As a young man during World War II, Walter G. Alexander II was training to become an aviation cadet at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. From the flight line, he was watching the other cadets take off during their training. The irony was that before he arrived at Tuskegee, Alexander had never been on a plane in his life. Fortunately, an instructor pilot at the base offered Alexander a ride in the air.

“It was exhilarating,” he says now of his first flight. “Mostly it was flying around, demonstrating different things. [The instructor] got me really excited when he did aerobatics to show me what it was like, because it was something I was going to in the course of training have to learn how to do.”

Alexander, a retired dentist now in his 80s who lives in South Orange, has the distinct honor of being a member of the Tuskegee Airmen, the distinguished first group of African American pilots in the armed forces during World War II.

“I understood the significance of the Tuskegee Airmen,” he says in a phone interview, “so I was aware of the problems that made it so significant. There were no African Americans in the Air Force because it wasn’t permitted, and there was strict segregation not just in the Air Force but in the armed services.”

Alexander’s interest in aviation began as a youngster when he used to build model airplanes in his hometown of Orange. On a scholarship at Rutgers he studied mechanical engineering and graduated in 1943. (He was the first African American to graduate from the university’s College of Engineering, according to Rutgers’ alumni association). Alexander then moved to Los Angeles to work as an engineer for Douglas Aircraft. 

A few years earlier in 1940, the Selective Training and Service Act allowed African American men to serve in the Air Corps, according to a history of the Airmen on the National Museum of the Air Force Web site. For Alexander, an opportunity came up for men to serve as aviation cadets in the Corps by taking a physical without having to be in the army.

“A number of us who were working at Douglas at the time had draft deferments, [and] were not required to register for the service any further. [We] decided to take the exam to see if we could qualify, and passed.”

Alexander first went to Fort McArthur in California and then to Mississippi, where he took his physical and passed the exams to become a cadet. Afterwards he embarked on the next phase of his training in Tuskegee, Ala. According to Tuskegee University’s Web site, the institution was chosen as the site because it already had a pilot training program and an airfield.

“When I got to Tuskegee,” he said,  “I found I was in a group of what we call PAC—pre-aviation cadets—because it was more candidates for the course than they could accommodate. We were stationed there to wait for our training to start, which took about six months.”

While at Tuskegee, the young cadet experienced two different worlds: life at the base, and the segregation outside that was the norm in the South. He was already prepared for that treatment, since his uncle was a physician at the local veterans hospital there. “The atmosphere among the African American residents of Tuskegee was welcoming. The other part was questionable or negative. I had been in that area before I steered clear of any indication of trouble."

Alexander never had a chance to fly overseas. By the time he graduated in June 1945 as a second lieutenant, the war in Europe concluded. “My regret at the time was not that the war is over,” he says, “but only that I couldn’t get into the next phase of training and fly the tactical combat aircraft. But other than that, I was quite satisfied to get out of the service.”

Afterwards Alexander attended Howard University to study dentistry. His practice was first in Orange, and then he moved his office to South Orange, where he has resided for over 30 years. He recently retired from his practice of more than five decades following a heart operation a year ago.

In past years the Tuskegee Airmen have received attention—a 1995 television movie starring Laurence Fishburne was made about the group. Alexander is gratified by the recognition of those Airmen who died in combat. “They were the ones I have always thought deserved the honors that they never received,” he says. “I never felt cheated being in that group because I didn’t put myself in the same position of those people who served overseas. I didn’t feel that I had been deprived of any recognition because I didn’t go over and put my life on the line like they did.”

Alexander says he values the training he received at the base, and describes it as exciting. “Just learning to fly and being able to fly,” he says, “and the experience of becoming a pilot is something I don’t believe that I will ever forget.”