Milton Pitts Crenchaw | Tuskegee Airmen trainer, 96

Milton Pitts Crenchaw, 96, a flight instructor who trained hundreds of the U.S. military's revered Tuskegee Airmen, died Tuesday at Piedmont Henry Hospital near Atlanta after battling heart disease and pneumonia.

Mr. Crenchaw, a native of Little Rock, is believed to be among the last surviving instructors of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African Americans to fly combat planes in World War II.

He was among the original instructors in the program that President Franklin Roosevelt wanted to train black pilots for war, daughter Dolores Singleton said.

In an era when black military personnel were being arrested while fighting segregation at military installations, the Tuskegee Airmen were integrating the war effort at the front lines.

Mr. Crenchaw trained hundreds of pilots at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama in the 1940s, according to a biography by the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. Later, he helped establish an aviation program at Philander Smith College in Little Rock and received many accolades for his service. - AP