Frank Macon, Former Tuskegee Airman, Passes Away At 97
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (CBS4) - The State of Colorado has lost a hero. Former Tuskegee Airman and Colorado Springs resident Frank Macon has died.
Macon died at his home on Sunday. He was 97 years old.
Macon was a Colorado Springs native who learned to fly at an airstrip north of the city that has now become the General Benjamin O. Davis Airfield on the campus of the United States Air Force Academy.
He enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1943 and began military flight training in 1944. He signed up for the Civil Air Patrol after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, when he was in high school.
Macon established the Frank Macon Trades Scholarship Charitable Trust, for those wanting to go to school for a trade. The scholarship will hand out its first award in May.
At its height, there were 14,000 Tuskegee Airmen. Now, it's estimated there are only about 50 left alive.
