Brown’s wingman Hudner dies

One was the son of a Mississippi sharecropper, the other a privileged New England prep school graduate. One died young, a casualty of war. The other lived a long life celebrated for service to country and championing of racial equality. Navy Ensign Jesse L. Brown of Hattiesburg and Lt. Thomas J. Hudner Jr. of Massachusetts, who died Nov. 13 at age 93, will forever be linked in history. On Dec. 4, 1950, the two pilots were flying above North Korea’s Chosin Reservoir when Brown’s plane was shot down, crash-landing on a snow-packed mountain. Hudner ditched his plane and attempted to free his wingman from the smoking wreckage. He could not. In 2013, Hudner returned to NK in hopes of retrieving the remains of Brown. Although he failed, his war-time heroics had become the stuff of legends … and earning him the Medal of Honor. As a lesson in brotherhood, coming just two years after the U.S. military had desegregated, it resonated much deeper. “Not a day goes by that I don’t think of that day, and Jesse,” Hudner reflected decades later, flanked by Brown’s widow, the now-late Daisy Brown Thorne, during a ship-christening ceremony in 1973. (Boston Globe 11/13/17) Central Mississippi Note: Ensign Brown was the Navy’s first African-American pilot. USS Jesse L. Brown, before decommissioning, was homeported at both Naval Station Mobile, Ala., and Pascagoula, Miss. Daisy Brown Thorne, who retired after 30 years of teaching in the Hattiesburg Public School District, passed away in July 2014.