TUSKEGEE VETS ON NEW MISSION AIRMEN SEEK TO PRESERVE STORIES.

Byline: Rachel Uranga Staff Writer

More than six decades ago, Lowell Steward dodged enemy fire in the skies above Europe - risking his life for a country that refused to treat him as an equal.

Steward's heroism and that of the more than 1,000 of his fellow African-American fighter pilots - World War II fliers known as the Tuskegee Airmen - helped break the military's color barrier while fighting to liberate Europe from the Nazis.

With the airmen aging and their ranks dwindling rapidly, those who remain worry that the stories of their accomplishments will die with them.

``After we are gone, the story that will be told will be different than what actually happens,'' said Steward, 85, who lives in Oxnard. ``They will tell the story like they like to tell it, not the way it was.''

Steward was among an elite group - the first and only African-Americans in the Army Air Force to be trained as fighter pilots between 1941 and 1948. Based in Alabama, they lived in racially segregated quarters donated by the Tuskegee Institute, founded by Booker T. Washington.

Some helped win the war in Europe while others helped win a struggle for equality at home.

Although trained as a bomber, Bill Ellis, now 88 and living in Los Angeles, never fought in the war. Instead, he participated in a nonviolent protest at a white-only officer's club at Freeman Field in Indiana - an action that helped pave the way for Executive Order 9981, signed by President Harry Truman in 1948, desegregating the military.

``With most of the fellows in their late 70s and 80s, it's just a guess whether or not we can get others interested in carrying our legacy forward,'' said Edward Tillmon, 82, head of the Los Angeles Chapter of the Tuskegee Airmen Inc.

In the years after the war, with the evolution of the civil rights movement, the Tuskegee Airmen told their stories to crowded rooms filled with students, church-goers, factory workers.

Now Steward, who flew more than 125 missions over Italy, cannot remember the last time he spoke with a class.

``I just can't do it anymore,'' said Steward, who needs a cane to get around his Oxnard home.

On a dresser in his house sits a black-and-white photo of five fighter pilots - all black men from Los Angeles - readying to take their fighter planes soaring above the skies.

When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Steward was a star basketball player at Santa Barbara State College, now the University of California, Santa Barbara.

He and his white teammates enlisted in the Army Air Force, determined to help defend their country. But unlike his white counterparts, Steward wasn't immediately placed. The military, as much of the rest of the country, deemed African-Americans inferior, unable to handle such complicated machinery.

Steward was eventually assigned to Tuskegee, a military training school that had only opened a year earlier under pressure from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the flourishing African-American press.

``I was just so determined to prove I could fly I tolerated conditions,'' Steward said. ``For years I never talked about it. I didn't think of myself as a hero.''

Then Steward's buddy, fellow Tuskegee flier Robert Williams, sold their story to HBO. ``Legends of Tuskegee'' was broadcast in 1995, generating a groundswell of interest nationwide.

Four years later, the National Park Service and the Tuskegee Airmen Inc., the group that organizes a national convention, launched a $1 million effort to record the stories of all the surviving airmen.

But only half of those stories have been recorded and time is running short. Officials with the national group estimate that fewer than 300 of the original 1,000 Tuskegee Airmen are still alive.

``These men were the forerunners of desegregation for the rest of the country. So it's very important to record and tell those stories for future generations,'' said Tyrone Brandyburg, who helps design tours at the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site. ``They knew they could not fail in their mission; all African-Americans were looking at them.''

The highly decorated African-American fighter group didn't fail. From 1942-44, the 332nd Fighter Group never lost a bomber while patrolling Italy, North Africa and the Mediterranean.

``Every day is important to tell our history,'' said Steward. ``If you don't know where you have been, you don't know where you are going.''

Rachel Uranga, [phone]

rachel.uranga(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

2 photos, 2 boxes

Photo:

(1) Tuskegee Airmen Lowell Steward, left, and Bill Ellis served in World War II and helped break the military's color barriers.

Michael Owen Baker/Staff Photographer

(2) Current Oxnard resident Lowell Steward stands at center with other Tuskegee Airmen during World War II. Steward flew more than 125 missions over Italy in the liberation of Europe.

Box:

(1) ITS ORIGIN

(2) CALENDAR OF EVENTS