When visiting the Tuskegee Airmen Memorial at Sewickley Cemetery in Allegheny County, one name stands out among the dozens listed—that of Rosa Mae Willis Alford.
Alford, of New Brighton in Beaver County, is one in an “often forgotten cadre of women” associated with the World War II squadron of America's first Black military airmen.
Alford was a Mississippi native and skilled technician who attended the Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) in Alabama, where the airmen trained. She majored in home economics and worked her way through college by fixing the squadron’s primary training aircraft.
Alford would move to New Brighton with her husband, a native of Beaver County, after college. She went on to become the first Black home economics teacher at New Brighton High School in the 1950s. After receiving her master’s degree from Michigan State, she was hired as the first Black guidance counselor at Beaver Falls High School in the 1960s.
Regis Bobonis Sr. — a historian, researcher, and Pittsburgh’s first Black TV news reporter — spoke with the Beaver County Times in 2015, one year before his death, recalling the first time he learned of Alford in a casual conversation with a relative.
“The family member was where I was doing research and he said, 'You know there’s a woman,'” Bobonis told the paper.
Alford died in 2011, her remarkable life recounted in this obituary. Two years later, the airmen memorial bearing her name was dedicated in Sewickley. She is the only woman listed.
Nearly 1 in 10 Tuskegee Airmen called Western Pennsylvania home. Pilots also hailed from Philadelphia and its surrounding suburbs.
Asked to explain the Pittsburgh area’s disproportionate share, Samuel Black, director of the African American program at the Heinz History Center, said, “Nobody really knows why."
The U.S. military was segregated, and many aspiring Black pilots were being denied the opportunity to fly. Under pressure in 1940, several years before the outbreak of World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s War Department established a flight program at historically Black colleges. They included the Tuskegee Institute, where a civilian pilot training program had launched years prior under the direction of a Bryn Mawr native named Charles Alfred Anderson, “the father of Black aviation.”
“There was already this consciousness on the part of African Americans in relation to the military and the role African Americans played in the 20th-century U.S. Army,” Black said. “The door was already open for African Americans to have different roles.”
Although white pilots were not allowed to fly more than 52 missions, the Tuskegee Airmen often flew up to 100 missions due to a lack of replacements, according to a Pitt-funded documentary: "Fly Boys: Western Pennsylvania's Tuskegee Airmen."
By the end of World War II, the Tuskegee Airmen had racked up thousands of combat stories, missions, medals, and commendations. But that didn’t guarantee acceptance.
Elaine Effort’s father, the late Sgt. Vernol Leapheart, was crew chief for then-Col. Benjamin O. Davis Jr., commander of the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II.
“They had a lot of racist comments about Blacks and their abilities,” Effort, a retired Pittsburgh news reporter, told PA Local. “They said, ‘We don't believe Blacks will stay and fight.’ The Tuskegee Airmen trained and trained, and they weren’t using them in action.”
Effort continued: “Finally Eleanor Roosevelt came down to Tuskegee. She made a point by getting in a plane. Word came from the White House that someone told them not to let her do it. She went up anyway. The assistant later said, ‘Have you ever tried to tell Elenor Roosevelt what to do?’”
In 2010, Bobonis discovered several men from Pittsburgh had been Tuskegee Airmen. He began to organize a memorial soon after.
“The more they looked into it the more they thought, ‘Oh wow, we really should do something to honor these guys,’” said Effort, who was part of the planning. “It seemed like it came together quickly. Once we started working on this, the pieces started falling into place.”
It is the largest outdoor Tuskegee Airmen memorial in the country. Another memorial is displayed in Concourse A of the Pittsburgh International Airport.
Some Tuskegee Airmen are still alive, carrying on the legacy.
“It is such a brilliant story. They faced all kinds of racial prejudice but they showed them what Black men and women could do,” Effort added.
—Tanisha Thomas, newsletter writer | 
