Dr. Roscoe C. Brown, Jr. is a living legend. In World War II, he was commander of the 100th Fighter Squadron of the 332nd Fighter Group and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal with eight Oak Leaf Clusters. The first of the15 pilots to shoot down the advanced German Me-262 jet fighter, he was bestowed the Congressional Gold Medal along with his fellow Tuskegee Airmen, the first group of African American military pilots in the United States who overcame adversity and prejudice to excel in a field they were told they were unfit to serve in. But to Dr. Edward “Ned” Boehm, Jr., president of Keystone College in La Plume, he is simply “Roscoe,” a close personal friend and colleague for over 20 years. “He is an ambassador of goodwill and human understanding…He’s a colleague, he’s a friend, he’s a mentor – he’s an example of what is right in America,” Boehm said. “We all have a wonderful part to play in this world, and more importantly, in this country, and that’s what, I’d say, has really driven Roscoe all these years. So many changes that have taken place are really due to people like Roscoe and Roscoe himself.” The respect is certainly mutual. “He brings a tremendous amount of enthusiasm. He respects his students. One of the things as an educator is you have to respect the students…every person has something to contribute, and what I as an educator and what Ned Boehm stand for is helping them to have the opportunity to develop those interests and skills to the maximum of their ability,” Brown responded. The educators first met while Boehm was at Texas Christian University serving as a coordinator for a nationwide scholars program by the Tandy Corporation.
Seeking a diverse intellectual board, Brown was selected and the two quickly became friends. When Boehm later became president of Keystone College, Brown was there whenever Boehm asked, most recently speaking at the college in 2011 at a scholarship luncheon. “When they were all honored in Washington, each had a replica of their plane with the story of their life, and he left it here for me at Keystone College. I was really honored,” Boehm related. “It’s amazing how students do care about history and especially care about their own history. That’s a part of who we are here. Roscoe has visited here seven times. He’s invited to speak everywhere in the United States, and yet he selects us every time…He says, ‘You know, Keystone College has it right. You understand how wonderful human beings in every capacity.’ So it’s been that kind of relationship.” Gateway to success While Brown, a Washington, D.C., native living in Riverdale, N.Y., is well-known for his military accomplishments, he has spent most of his life as a gifted educator, beginning in 1946. Currently the Director of the Center for Urban Education Policy and University Professor at the Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York, he is past President of Bronx Community College of CUNY and was formerly Director of the Institute of African American Affairs at New York University. “I come from a generation of Americans, particularly black Americans, who believe that education was the gateway to success, that we had to preserve the history and culture of our society. We have to get our skills to be able to contribute to society, and learning itself is an exciting adventure.
My doctoral dissertation was in exercise physiology, which was the forerunner of the sports medicine movement,” Brown explained. “I’m one of the founders of the American College of Sports Medicine, so it makes you feel good when you help to change society as we did in the Tuskegee Airmen with regard to race relations, as we did in sports science in regard to exercise, and as we did in politics in regard to the Civil Rights Movement. “Each of those things I participated in because my generation really was the so-called ‘Greatest Generation,’ and we believe that service in some capacity to society was the price that we paid.” ‘Red Tails’ honors Airmen Brown recently consulted on “Red Tails,” a big-budget Hollywood movie that portrays the story of the Tuskegee Airmen. Brown said his phone has been ringing off the hook since the film produced by “Star Wars” creator George Lucas was released in January, but he doesn’t mind. “During Black History Month, that was the main time that we were talked about, but as a result of the HBO movie in1995 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007 and now the ‘Red Tails’ movie, most of America knows about the Tuskegee Airmen. They may not know the intimate details, but the main thing is they know that we overcome the barriers of racism and segregation to become outstanding fighter pilots,” he emphasized. “We blew up trains. We blew up planes. It may be dramatized and the digital cameras make it look really almost more exciting than it was, but the fact is we did those things, and we did them under the backdrop of the racism of some people at the time that said that African Americas couldn’t do these things. We knew damn well we could do it because many of us went to segregated schools, but our teachers taught us that we could do anything anybody else could do if we applied ourselves.” He praised Lucas for his creativity, sensitivity, and dedication to telling their story, which took almost three decades of production to finally be completed. “He did emphasize one thing – he wanted the movie to be about heroes, not about victims. The result is while it does show some of the trials and tribulations that we faced through racism, it doesn’t focus on that totally. It focuses mainly on our success in the air, the combat work, which makes it an exciting movie,” Brown said. Memories of war, peace Brown may have been a pilot at the age of 22, but he still vividly recalls his service at age 89. It is not the glory of victory, however, that he treasures most. “The most poignant memory is the fellowship and the brotherhood we developed among ourselves as achieving African American men, young men trying to prove something in an area that we hadn’t been exposed to before. It was exciting, and most of my best friends are people who came out of the Tuskegee Airmen,” Brown said.
“The most important mission, of course, was the mission in Berlin when I shot down the jet. But the personal memories and the personal interactions are the most significant thing in my life.” Having fought racial prejudice his entire lifetime, witnessing the 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama as the first African American president of the United States was a special moment for the former fighter pilot. Brown hopes his own lasting legacy will be the pursuit of excellence and justice, dedicating the rest of his life to helping today’s youth overcome the obstacles of poverty, war, and stereotyping. “My mantra is excellence overcomes prejudice, excellence overcomes obstacles, and you have to be persistent in your pursuit of excellence,” Brown stated. “He changed lives as an educator all of his life. He brought truth and precision to education…He is exemplary in his attitude towards change in a positive way. He didn’t get sidetracked by anger. Not that it wasn’t felt, but he knew how to control it and turn it into a force of good,” Boehm added. Brown slated to return to area Keystone continues to honor this legacy with an endowed scholarship named in his honor, and Brown donated a picture of his famous P-51 Mustang plane, “Bunnie,” to the college’s Miller Library in January. Boehm hopes to have his longtime friend return to the campus as early as March. “It’s a great college. It has a great tradition. It has a great purpose, and Ned is an outstanding president,” Brown acknowledged.
“I love Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania has a long tradition of fighting for equality. Many of the people in places like Keystone are really low-income white people who have been denied the opportunity because of the economic imbalance in society. One of the things we have to do is make the opportunity available for everybody regardless of where they live, what their ethnic background is, what their gender is. Opportunity opens doors. Opportunity builds an economy.” “I was a proud president when he left his (replica) plane here,” Boehm beamed. “Diversity means a lot to us as far as a campus and a community, so to have Roscoe be our mentor and have us as one of his star attractions means a lot to everybody.”