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New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Tuesday that flags would fly at half staff through Saturday, July 9, for Roscoe C. Brown Jr., who served with the Tuskegee Airmen in World World II and died Saturday at a hospital in the Bronx. He was 94.The part-time Sag Harbor resident, who also had a home in the Bronx, was born on March 9, 1922, is credited with being the first 15th Air Force pilot to shoot down a German jet fighter, according to a Facebook page managed by his family.
Mr. Brown would head to the East End to visit friends, eventually coming out to speak about diversity in communities in the area of Sag Harbor, knowing residents of Sag Harbor Hills, a historically black community, where there was an idea that black people were not welcome elsewhere, according to his son Dennis Brown, of Sag Harbor.
He purchased a home in Sag Harbor in the early 1990s. Later on, his son had tried to coax him to stay there permanently, but Mr. Brown liked the access he had from his Riverdale home to so many things near the city.
While out in the Hamptons, the avid runner had kept at his exercise and, as he aged, his physical limitations became frustrating.
“He didn’t just sit on the beach and look out,” his son said. “He was always active.”
In 2007, Mr. Brown and fellow Tuskegee Airmen were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. The Tuskegee Airmen were the country’s first black military airmen—before 1940, African-American men could not fly for the U.S. military. The pilots were known as the Red Tails for the painted red ends of their P-51 Mustang planes.
Mr. Brown was also awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal with right Oak Leaf Clusters for his service as a Red Tail pilot and commander of the 100th Fighter Squadron of the 332nd Fighter Group.
After the war, Mr. Brown’s focus turned to education. He served as the director of the Center for Urban Education Policy at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York, as the president of Bronx Community College and director of the Institute of Afro-American Affairs at New York University and as a professor of education at the CUNY Graduate Center. He earned a doctorate in exercise physiology from New York University.
Mr. Brown was also known to be a champion for civil rights, having received the NAACP Freedom Award.
He was predeceased by his wife, Laura, and is survived by three children, Dennis Brown of Sag Harbor, Diane McDougall of Washington, D.C., and Donald Brown, of Ewing, New Jersey.
There will be no funeral in the traditional sense, living up to Mr. Brown’s wishes, his son said. He wanted a jazz concert instead, and one is scheduled for early September this year.
“My Dad was more about celebrating and having and good time and dancing and people getting together,” said the younger Brown. “He really did not like the long dredge and false testimony.”
on Jul 5, 2016