Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Charles Walter "Chuck" Dryden, a member of the famed WWII Tuskegee Airmen, will be eulogized today following his death last week at the age of 87. Funeral services will be held at Cascade United Methodist Church, 3144 Cascade Road in Atlanta. The Rev. Andrew Young, former U.N. ambassador and Atlanta mayor, will deliver the eulogy.
Dryden trained at the Tuskegee Army Flying School in Alabama and was among the second class of black pilots to graduate pilot training in U.S. military history. On June 9, 1943, he made history yet again, leading a flight of six pilots against enemy aircraft over Sicily, the first time black American pilots of the U.S. Army Air Corps had engaged in aerial combat.
Dryden also flew combat missions in Korea and served as a professor of air science at Howard University, among many other distinctions. He also wrote a book about his life, "A-Train: Memoirs of a Tuskegee Airman." Our condolences to his family.