HANCOCK, VICTOR L., D.D.S.

On Tuesday March 8, 2005. Beloved husband of Elaine B. Hancock; father of Ava, Mark, Norma and Kathryn; grandfather of Obi, Elaine, Jon, Kenneth and Kevin; brother of Elinor (Henderson) and Richard. Also surviving are a host of nieces, nephews, other relatives and friends.

On Friday, March 11 from 6 to 8 p.m., friends may call at Dunbarton Chapel, Howard University, 2900 Van Ness St. N.W. Funeral services will be held Saturday, March 12, at 12 Noon at St. John's Episcopal Church, Lafayette Square, 16th and H Sts., N.W. Interment Rock Creek Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the Victor L. Hancock Endowed Scholarship for Howard College of Dentistry, 2225 Georgia Ave., N.W., Suite 922, Washington, DC 20059 Attn: Karine Sewell. Arrangements by McGUIRE FUNERAL SERVICE.

Custis, Lemuel Rodney

Lemuel Rodney Custis, who was Hartford's first black police officer and helped bring about desegregation of the armed forces as a member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen, died Thursday, February 24, 2005. He was 89.

Custis, of Wethersfield, was a member of the first class of black men to undergo pilot training at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. George Schnyer of East Windsor, who has studied the Tuskegee Airmen, said Custis was the last surviving member of the group.

Custis was not boastful. He never mentioned he was leaving his police job to become an Army pilot during World War II.

Connie Nappier of New Britain, who later went through the same pilot training Custis completed to become a Tuskegee Airman, remembered Custis as a beat cop in Hartford. Custis had joined the department in 1940, two years after earning a bachelor's degree at Howard University.

"One day we missed Lem," Nappier recalled Tuesday. After two or three days passed, he and many others in Hartford's black community figured "the man found a way to get rid of Lem."

They learned the truth months later when the Pittsburgh Courier, a newspaper that served black America, arrived. "There was Lem on the front page with the other four fellas, having earned his wings," Nappier said.

"Lem was one of those who was determined that he was going to see it through and get his wings, not to pin bouquets on himself, but to prove we had the capabilities that any other human had," Nappier said.

The Army was responding to pressure when it agreed to begin a training program for black pilots at Tuskegee.

Custis was assigned to the all-black 99th Fighter Squadron, which flew escort and patrol missions in P-40 Warhawks in North Africa, Sicily and Italy from April 1943 to July 1944. Members of the 99th first tangled with German fliers while covering the beaches during the Allied invasion at Anzio on Jan. 27, 1944.

Sixteen Warhawk pilots spotted 15 German Focke-Wulf 190 fighters dive-bombing Allied ships off Anzio. The black aviators attacked the Germans, who were flying superior airplanes, and shot down five without losing one of their own.

The squadron's success that day gave Custis a sense that he was part of something special, although it would be decades before the black aviators would receive wide acclaim for their combat in Europe.

"After our success at Anzio and Salerno ... we had an inkling that perhaps we had made a real contribution," Custis said during an interview in April 2000. "And then, of course, as the years went by, and you got older and you had a better perspective of history and so forth, we could realize that we had really done something from a historical standpoint."

The Tuskegee Airmen went on to earn more fame by escorting Allied bombers. German pilots were taking a heavy toll on the lumbering bombers, and fighter escort was crucial.

The Tuskegee Airmen, by then flying as the 332nd Fighter Group, were the only Allied outfit not to lose a bomber they escorted to enemy fighters.

Despite their performance in combat, the black aviators still endured indignities at home and abroad. But it didn't make them bitter.

"I like to think that most of us, as a result of all of our experiences, tried to really overcome some of those scars we had picked up over the years - some of the mental and social scars," Custis said during an interview in 2002. "We tried to be good citizens in whatever city or town we thought we'd live our lives in."

Custis left the service in 1946 after attaining the rank of major and went to work in Connecticut state government. He retired in 1980.

Custis' wife, Ione, died in 1991. His funeral is scheduled for 10 a.m. Saturday at the Farley-Sullivan Funeral Home, 34 Beaver Road, Wethersfield. Burial will follow at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Hartford.

Reference: Hardford Curant By DAVID OWENS, Courant Staff Writer
_____

Wings Dip For Mr. Custis

Hartford Currant, March 3, 2005

WETHERSFIELD -- As part of a generation venerated for its service to the country during World War II, Lemuel Rodney Custis carried an extra burden into the fight. Mr. Custis, 89, who died Feb. 28, was one of the first blacks to integrate the U.S. Army Air Corps.

He was among the first five black pilots to receive their silver wings in March 1942. By doing so, Mr. Custis, who lived in Wethersfield, helped break down a significant racial barrier that would lead to the desegregation of the military and disproved demeaning and inaccurate stereotypes about blacks' inability to complete highly technical flying courses.

Prior to joining the military, Mr. Custis, who was a graduate of Howard University, was the first black police officer hired by the Hartford department. He left the force to join what the military considered an "experiment." Pressure from civil rights groups and black newspapers had forced the government to allow the training of blacks to fly.

That experiment produced the Tuskegee Airmen, a segregated squadron that earned fame flying over North Africa, Sicily and Italy. On Jan. 27, 1944, Mr. Custis, by then a lieutenant, shot down a German Focke-Wulf 190 fighter off the Anzio beachhead. The black pilots went on to win more acclaim for their ability to protect bombers on long missions.

Although celebrated for their airborne skill, the Tuskegee Airmen still suffered slights and segregation at military bases and in their hometowns. "We were fighting a war on two fronts. We were fighting the enemy in Europe and Africa and we fought a Jim Crow society at home," Mr. Custis said in an interview a number of years ago.

Mr. Custis left the military as a major in 1946 and worked in Connecticut state government until he retired in 1980. After earning his fame as a Tuskegee Airman, he came home to enjoy the fruits of victories hard won at home and abroad.

_____

A Humble Man Who `Loved His Country'

March 6, 2005 By MARYELLEN FILLO, Courant Staff Writer

Lemuel Rodney Custis, a member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen and Hartford's first black police officer, was remembered at his funeral Saturday as a combat hero and a humble man who advanced the integration of the U.S. armed forces.

Custis, 89, believed to have been the last member of the first class of black aviators to train at Tuskegee Institute, was buried with military honors at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Hartford. It was a day short of what would have been the 63rd anniversary of his history-making graduation as a fighter pilot. Custis died Feb. 24."

He paved the way for us, " said Victor Terrelong, a Long Island resident who followed Custis at Tuskegee. "Even though it was still hard, the first class made it easier for all of us who came along later and wanted to fly."

"They wanted the experiment with Lem and the others to fail," added Clayton F. Lawrence, referring to the racially charged trial program that ended up producing the acclaimed air squadrons. "But Lem and the others proved to those who said we couldn't do the job that we could," said Lawrence, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, Tuskegee alumnus and president of the Tuskegee Airmen Inc. Claude B. Govan Tri-State Chapter.

Custis was hired in 1939 as a Hartford police officer. He left to enlist in World War II and graduated with four others in the first flight class from Tuskegee in 1942. He flew 92 combat missions with the 99th Fighter Squadron and received the Distinguished Flying Cross for heroism. He later returned to Tuskegee as an advanced flight instructor, eventually leaving the military as a captain.

"We stood on the shoulders of that class," said Roscoe C. Brown Jr., a Tuskegee airman and an administrator at City University of New York. "If he and the four others from that class had not been successful 63 years ago, the rest of us would never have been airmen."

Lee A. Archer Jr., a retired lieutenant colonel and a Tuskegee airman, said Custis served as a role model for many young black men who were in the service during World War II.

"He was a gentleman - well, as much of a gentleman as you could be as an upperclassman at Tuskegee," Archer said with a laugh. "But for the first time in my life, there was someone I could emulate," Archer said. "My goal was to be like him."

And while speakers at the funeral focused on Custis' military accomplishments, his friends said it was not a subject Custis talked about."

It wasn't until the last few years that he really talked about his military service," said Bill Beeson, who with his wife, Sheila, lived next door to Custis for 38 years. "And then he wanted to talk more about England and Europe in the war," said Beeson, a native of England. "He mostly liked to talk about how his garden was doing or we'd talk about our lawns."

"He was just a good person, an outstanding person who was not vindictive or mean, and never talked bad about anyone," Sheila Beeson said. "He was the greatest."

Among those attending the funeral at the Farley-Sullivan Funeral Home in Wethersfield were representatives of the Hartford Police Department, the Connecticut State Police, several veterans' groups and state Treasurer Denise Nappier. The service included two things that Custis had specifically requested: a closed casket and the singing of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."

Close friends said Custis sorely missed his wife, Ione, who died in 1991. They had no children and friends said they believed Custis had no other relatives.

"We were his family," said Maria Perez, who with her brother, Hector Ayala, lived next door to Custis for about nine years. The two were chosen to receive the flag that draped Custis' coffin, an honor they said was priceless.

"We used to take him to his doctor's appointments, help him with chores, things like that," Perez said. "He did so much for us, more than we did for him, so getting the flag is such an honor. We will put it in a very special place in our home."

Agreeing that Custis shunned the limelight, friends said he would, however, have approved of the goodbye.

"He's surely smiling if he is watching this now," whispered one mourner as he and about 100 others at the gravesite listened to the sounding of taps and looked up to see four A-10 Warthogs fly across a sunlit sky. As the quartet of jets headed to the west, one flew out of formation following the military tradition signifying a missing man.

"He loved his country, even when it didn't treat him the way it should have," said Mark Evans, whose father had worked with Custis. "He showed anyone who thought otherwise that it is the mettle of the man, not the color of his skin, that counts."

Click here for Lemuel Custis Obituary in pdf