“My daddy wanted me to be a federal agriculture demonstrator. They’d go around and tell people what to plant, what kind of fertilizer to use. Dad thought that was a good job for me,” Handy said.

A Harbeson-area resident since the early 1960s, Handy was born in 1920 in Quantico on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

He grew up enjoying the shore’s bounty – fresh seafood and farm-fresh vegetables, the latter being something that almost turned into a career.

When Handy was growing up, the area’s local federal agriculture man was black, successful and, Handy said, someone his father thought he should emulate.

“He had 11 children. He knew he could feed them – and he was working for the government, too,” he said.

After graduating from Salisbury High School, Handy entered Tuskegee College in Alabama, majoring in agriculture.

Course corrections

It wasn’t long before the first twist came his way – Tuskegee would become the training center for black military aviators – pilots, navigators, bombardiers and aeronautical engineers.

Opportunity to fly

“Tuskegee College – that’s what it was called then, it hadn’t become a university – had land that was big enough for an airport. We had buildings that were big enough until the barracks could be built,” Handy said.

The Tuskegee program was also the manifestation of an education and philosophical debate that would be carried out in the form of a wartime test. The question – did blacks have the right stuff – the intelligence, to be aviators?

“Dr. Booker T. Washington sided with politicians about the education of blacks in the south. He was opposite from [W.E.B.] Du Bois.

“Du Bois said educate the brain and the brain will educate the hands. Washington was saying educate the hands and you’ll always have a job,” Handy said. Washington founded Tuskegee College.

Tuskegee’s program would, for the first time in America’s history, put black men behind the controls of P-40 Warhawks, P-39 Air Cobras, P-47 Thunderbolts and P-51 Mustangs, the fighter plane with which the Tuskegee Airmen would become most commonly identified.

“The P-51 was a real fighter – it was a bad plane,” Handy said of what was, in his opinion, the only U.S. war bird capable of dusting German Luftwaffe aircraft flown by pilots then thought to be the world’s best.

Handy said before the aviation program began, men who graduated from Tuskegee with four-year degrees were automatically locked into one position – lieutenants in the U.S. Army Infantry.

“When they had started talking about the Tuskegee Airmen, I signed up to be a pilot. I had passed the academic and physical tests, and I was on my way to class to become a pilot and I started thinking, to be a fighter pilot you’ve got to be a cold-blooded killer because if you don’t shoot him down he’s going to shoot you down.

“Then I thought, you know, birds don’t even fly at night and you’ve got to be in the air, flying at night,” he said.

Handy took a turn, changing course.

Not only had he changed his mind about becoming a fighter pilot, but after talking to three classmate buddies who wanted to become pilots, they, too, changed direction.

“I said, let’s go back and see if we can become aeronautical technical engineers. We signed up,” he said.

The group was sent to Maxwell Army Air Field near Montgomery, Ala., for additional aptitude exams, including tests and training to become radio operators and parachute fitters. Handy said he never was required to do a parachute jump.

“If I would have had to jump, I probably would have been someplace else – maybe telling people how to plant cucumbers and cantaloupes,” he said.

In June 1941, the Tuskegee program officially began with formation of the 99th Fighter Squadron.

Old rules, rigorous training

Handy shipped to Chanute Field, Rantoul, Ill., then the world’s largest engineering-mechanical facility. He said at Chanute, blacks were segregated into the oldest barracks, ones that were no longer suitable for white Gis.

“But we were tough; we could handle it,” Handy said.

If learning to fly a fighter plane is difficult, then learning how to keep a fighter plane flying has to be next in difficulty.

The aeronautical technical engineering program took 27 months to complete – essentially a two-year program – as World War II raged.

“They put us through some stuff,” he said about the training program, which taught students how to repair and maintain every component on aircraft the squadron would use.

But as difficult, complex and new as learning aeronautical engineering was to the men, other aspects of life were familiar and disturbing.

“Rantoul was segregated. They didn’t invite us to the field’s church, so we went to a civilian church in the community,” Handy said.

The Tuskegee men attended services at a Methodist church that, with the exception of one black married couple, was an all-white congregation.

“We bought robes for everyone in the church choir. We bought books. We sang in the choir,” he said.

But, Handy said, constant reminders that the color line in Illinois was drawn as sharply as that deep in the heart of Dixie were everywhere.

“We went to the movies and they had a rope down the center of the theater. On the right side was white, on the left side was soul [black]. We made a mistake that first time, but the second time, we didn’t make a mistake – we were prepared,” he said.

A trip to the restroom for two men required a minimum of four men.

Going to war

Handy, now trained as a crew chief, headed overseas aboard the USS Mariposa, a luxury cruise liner pressed into service as a troop ship.

“The Mariposa was fast. We out-zigzagged a German submarine one night. They could never get a deadly shot,” he said.

The Mariposa’s port of arrival: Casablanca, Morocco, where the 99th got down to business, a business that boiled down to engaging Nazi forces in the North Africa campaign, and later in Pantelleria in the Mediterranean Sea, and in preparation for the Allied invasion of Sicily.

Handy said Italians treated black American GIs with respect and dignity. “They’d do our laundry and give us fresh greens, which we’d eat with K-rations that came in a can. We’d trade a Babe Ruth candy bars for almost a dozen eggs,” he said.

The 99th flew hundreds of sorties from Italy – bomber escorts, strafing and bombing runs, and dogfights against Luftwaffe fighters.

Upon an aircraft's return to base, Handy’s crew set to work patching, repairing, often changing an airplane’s entire engine, readying it for another mission.

He said sometimes the work was grueling, and at other times, less so.

Handy said stories of the squadron – which became known as Red Tails because of the red painted tail section of their aircraft – having never lost a 332nd Fighter Group bomber under their escort are probably not true.

He said given the numbers of flights and intensity of enemy attacks, to lose nothing would have been tough.

Resume course

Handy was a sophomore when he left Tuskegee, and after returning from war, he resumed his education at Alabama State College, where he took a master’s degree in education.

He taught in Delaware schools, including all-black William C. Jason High School into the late 1960s, and Sussex Central High School. He retired in 1995.

Handy through the years of his career in education, his advice to students has always been the same.

“Study hard now and plan for the coming tomorrow so you’ll be somebody,” he said.

That from a man who knows what it takes for successful take-offs and landings.