Submitted by Betty Anderson.
For years he worked in what he called a “stressful job”: sending pilots into the dangers of war without knowing if they would return to base. Although he sent escorts for U.S. bombers fighting for the freedom of the world, he and his comrades had neither the rights nor the respect of the people they protected.
However, this did not stop them from doing the right thing and doing it very well.
Staff Sgt. Edward Carl Wadley, who served with the 99th Pursuit Squadron of the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II, celebrates his 100th birthday on August 12.
The longtime resident of Lakewood Meadows Senior Apartments in Lakewood, WA, will be honored during a special ceremony from noon to 3 p.m. in the complex’s community room. The ceremony is sponsored by Fairfield Residential, the management company that owns the senior living facility, and will be held at 5230 112th St SW in Lakewood. He will also be honored by the Sam Bruce Chapter of the Tuskegee Airmen of the Northwest Region, based in Seattle.
He has been in the US for nearly a hundred years and remembers a difficult time when the black pilots and their support personnel were segregated from the white pilot squadrons and suffered a tremendous lack of respect until the white pilots realized that the black escort pilots shot down almost any enemy who tried to stop the white pilots from reaching US targets. The misunderstood squadrons brought almost everyone back to base safely. They had a higher success rate than other US escort pilots and were in high demand as their reputation spread.
In total, between June 1944 and April 1945, the Tuskegee Airmen escorts reportedly lost only 27 of 179 escorted U.S. bombers to enemy aircraft. According to historical records, the pilots destroyed 112 enemy aircraft in the air, another 150 on the ground, and damaged 148.
As operations chief, Wadley was tasked with scheduling the Tuskegee Airmen for missions in Europe and elsewhere during the war. These airmen flew B-25 bombers and risked their lives for their fellow pilots. He said he would occasionally leave work and go home to wash away his anxieties with a strong drink.
“I was never a real drinker,” Wadley recalled. He attributed his occasional drinking to the extreme stress of his job. But he still went out and did it again and again.
Wadley recalls that most of his military service was characterized by racial segregation. White pilots and soldiers did not eat or sleep with black pilots and personnel.
“There was a lot of discrimination back then,” he said. It was a strange situation for him because he believed both groups of officers were equally talented and intelligent.
“Black officers I knew had attended college or were attending college,” he said. Some of the pilots had attended Langston University with him. In addition, several of the officers in his squadron were West Point graduates.
Despite the restrictions, he praised the black pilots for their integrity, reliability and national pride. He recalled the close relationship he had with the ten pilots in his squadron for whom he was responsible. When the pilots were in town with girlfriends or wives, they left their phone numbers and a note of where they could be quickly found in case they were called for duty. The pilots also always made sure that Wadley had a car in his office so he could pick them up when he received urgent flight orders for them.
Wadley was born in Geary, OK, 60 miles west of Oklahoma City. He graduated from (Frederick) Douglass High School and attended Langston University in Langston, OK. Right after high school, he married his high school sweetheart, Evelyn Ann Gray, and moved to the Bay Area city of Richmond, CA, where he, his parents, and siblings worked in the shipyards. Wadley worked as an electrical engineer for the Southern Pacific Railroad.
He and his wife settled in the Bay Area when they had four children – Stanley, Janice, Wanda Carol and Wilford. (Stanley and Janice predeceased him.) Wanda Carol lives in Atlanta, GA and Wilford lives in Oklahoma City.
Wadley enlisted in the Army Air Corps in Richmond in October 1943. He and his wife decided to keep the family in the area where the children were born while he continued his military career. Basic training began in Richmond and continued in South Carolina. He graduated in Denver, Colorado, with an administrative clerk degree before being stationed at Selfridge Field near Detroit, Michigan, where he planned flights for his fellow soldiers. He later served at Godman Army Airfield in Fort Knox, Kentucky.
Wadley said he experienced some social change in the military before being honorably discharged in April 1946.
“After getting to know each other and realizing they were human beings like everyone else,” he said, the white and black pilots began to socialize. “They got together and worked things out,” Wadley recalled.
After Wadley’s retirement, the U.S. Air Force was created in 1947, military history sources show, when the Army Air Corps was divided into two branches – the Army and the Air Force. President Harry S. Truman separated the military services and the federal civil service in 1948 with Executive Order 9981. The Air Force was the first fully integrated service branch, and the Army was not fully integrated until 1950 at the start of the Korean War, military history sources show.
Wadley and his wife Evelyn remained together until her death in the 1960s. He then married Vivian and they were together until they divorced in the 1960s. He then married Mary Harpole of Portland, with whom he had one child, Marietta Wadley.
From the ’60s through the ’90s, Wadley worked various jobs at the post office and auto dealerships and once owned his own dealership. He lived in Northern California, Oregon and Washington before settling in Lakewood nine years ago.
Wadley claims one of the keys to his longevity: “I think it’s mostly because I’ve never smoked. I tried smoking a whole pack once, but I couldn’t finish it. … didn’t like it.”
Betty Anderson is a retired news reporter and editor for The Tacoma News Tribune, The Houston Chronicle and The Seattle Times.
