Shaw Air Force Base renames road, honors Sumter's Tuskegee Airmen

A road on Shaw Air Force Base was named for two Sumter natives who flew with the famed Tuskegee Airmen in World War II at a ceremony on the base Thursday morning. The road, now officially "Ashley-Bowman Boulevard," begins at the Sumter Gate on U.S. 378 and St. Paul's Church Road and continues on the base to Dryden Way.

The road was named in memory of Lt. Col. Willie Lee Ashley and 1st Sgt. Leroy Bowman, who both grew up in Sumter and later flew in World War II.

A memorial for the Tuskegee Airmen, including a static display of a fighter aircraft, will be erected on the City of Sumter's Shaw Park, located nearby during a future upgrade to the park now in the planning stages.

The Tuskegee Airmen were military airmen who were involved in the so-called "Tuskegee Experience," an Army Air Corps program to train black Americans to fly and maintain combat aircraft. The Tuskegee Airmen included pilots, navigators, bombardiers, maintenance and support staff, instructors and all the personnel who kept the planes in the air, according to www.tuskegeeairmen.org

The Tuskegee Airmen, also known as the "Red Tails" for the paint scheme to their airplanes, were relatively unknown during the period immediately after World War II, according to the website, but since the Civil Rights Era in the mid-1960s, the airmen have been widely celebrated in books, television programs, films and museum exhibits.

During the ceremony, Sammy Way, curator of the Sumter Military Museum and a columnist for The Sumter Item, provided a brief history of the two airmen, saying both were dedicated to their communities and both pursued an education and realized their dreams, in addition to being part of a historic military tradition.

"They used their education to better the lives of the people around them," he said.

Ashley graduated from Morris College High School and attended the Hampton Institute in Virginia where he learned how to fly with the Civil Air Patrol. He was a member of the first class of the Tuskegee Institute and the first to fly solo, to receive his flying wings and to earn his second lieutenant bars, according to material provided by Shaw Air Force Base.

Ashley served for 14 months in North Africa, Sicily and in North Africa, Sicily and France, flying 77 combat missions and officially recording two downed enemy aircraft. He almost certainly downed a third aircraft for which he was not credited, Way said.

He returned home and continued to serve in the U.S. Air Force Reserve. Ashley graduated from University of Omaha and later earned a master's degree in parasitology from Catholic University and a doctorate in philosophy. He held positions in U.S. government agencies and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.

Bowman entered the U.S. Army in September 1941, and later became an aviation cadet at Tuskegee Army Air Field.

He graduated in 1943 as a second lieutenant and was assigned to the 332nd Fighter Group and the 99th Pursuit Group which escorted bomber groups to and from their targets. They earned the nickname "Red Tail Angels" from grateful bomber crews. Bowman flew 36 combat missions against the German Luftwaffe.

After the war, he earned degrees from Morris College and Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. In 1951, he returned to the Army until his retirement as a master sergeant in 1968. He later returned to Sumter and lived in the Gamecock City until his death.

This story was originally published July 15, 2016 at 8:34 AM with the headline "Shaw Air Force Base renames road, honors Sumter's Tuskegee Airmen."