Welcome back!
March is Women’s History Month and today we are
remembering Tuskegee Airman, Dr. Nancy Leftenant Colon.
Click or tap on the link for the full story and pictures.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/24/obituaries/nancy-leftenant-colon-dead.html?smid=nytcore-io
This obituary came from The New York Times. It was originally
published Jan. 24, 2025 and updated March 6, 2026.
Nancy Leftenant-Colon, 104, Dies; Army Nurse Broke a Color Barrier
After years of being barred from a segregated military, she became
the first Black nurse in the regular U.S. armed forces. She was later an
Air Force officer.
Her great-niece Gilda Leftenant confirmed the death, in a nursing
facility.
Mrs. Leftenant-Colon joined the U.S. Army Nurse Corps in February
1948, several months before President Harry S. Truman signed an
executive order desegregating the armed forces.
It was the culmination of a seven-year struggle. She had first tried to
enlist in 1941, fresh out of nursing school, but was told the military did
not accept Black women. She kept trying, and in 1945, with the flow
of wounded servicemen from overseas combat near its peak, she
was accepted into the Army Reserve.
She was one of just 500 Black nurses to serve during World War II, out
of a total of 50,000 — a result of government caps that kept
thousands more Black women from serving.
Mrs. Leftenant-Colon began her service at a hospital in Lowell, Mass.
Though she served in a segregated unit, the hospital itself was
integrated, part of what was called a military experiment in
desegregation.
A year later, she transferred to Lockbourne Army Air Field in
Columbus, Ohio, where she joined the nursing unit attached to the
332nd Fighter Group, part of the famed Tuskegee Airmen.
She repeatedly faced hostile supervisors, who made it clear that she
would be cashiered for the slightest infraction. “I made sure I was spit
and polish all the time,” she told the Long Island newspaper
Newsday in 2023.
Once, when a Black woman under her care went into labor
prematurely, she and her patient were refused admission to a whites-
only hospital in Columbus; she and a Black flight surgeon delivered
the baby on their own. (The baby survived.)
Later, while serving in Alabama, Mrs. Leftenant-Colon was not
allowed to eat in whites-only restaurants, even in her uniform. When
she was traveling through one Southern city, a white woman spit in
her face.
She joined the U.S. Air Force in 1952, five years after it was created, in
order to fulfill her dream of becoming a flight nurse.
She got her wish: Over the next 13 years, her postings included
Germany, Japan and various installations around the United States.
In 1954, she helped evacuate wounded French soldiers from Dien
Bien Phu, an outpost under siege by Vietnamese Communist forces.
She met Bob Hope when he was on a military-sponsored tour;
another time, she met Marilyn Monroe.
“I got to travel the world for free,” she told Newsday.
Her commission as an officer in the Army Nurse Corps made
international news.
“It was just part of the job,” she told Newsday in 1978. “But then there
were articles in The New York Times, letters from as far away as
England, and a newsreel.”
Nancy Carol Leftenant, known since childhood as Lefty, was born on
Sept. 29, 1920, in Goose Creek, S.C., a farming community near
Charleston. Both her parents, James and Eunice (Middleton)
Leftenant, were the children of parents born into slavery.
When Nancy was 3, the family — which eventually included 11 other
children — moved to Amityville, where her father found a job as a
laborer and her mother as a domestic worker.
She graduated from the Lincoln School for Nurses, in the Bronx, one
of the first institutions of its type open to Black women. While
repeatedly trying to enlist in the military, she worked at hospitals
around New York City.
“I saw a picture of an Army nurse with her cape,” she told Newsday
in 1997. “She looked so good — straight and tall. I wanted to do my
part.”
She married Bayard Colon in 1960. He died in 1972. In addition to
Gilda Leftenant, she is survived by a sister, Amy, as well as several
other nieces and nephews.
Mrs. Leftenant-Colon retired with the rank of major in 1965 and then
returned to Amityville, where she worked as a nurse for her local high
school.
She also became active in Tuskegee Airmen Inc., an association for
veterans of that storied unit. From 1989 to 1991, she served as its
president. She was the only woman ever to hold that position.
It was a particularly bittersweet assignment: Not only had she helped
care for pilots in the unit, but one of her brothers, Samuel G.
Leftenant, had been a Tuskegee Airman himself. He flew a P-51
Mustang, and in 1945 he was shot down over Austria. He was
declared dead, though his remains were never recovered.
*DRAFT
Congressional Record
HON. CHARLES E. SCHUMER
in the United States Senate
Saturday, January 25, 2025Tribute to Dr. Nancy Leftenant-Colon, Major,
USA (Retired)
Mr. Schumer. Mr. President, the first Black woman to serve in the U.S. Army
Nurse Corps when it was desegregated after World War II passed away
January. 8 at the age of 104 in Amityville, New York, where she grew up. Dr.
Nancy Leftenant-Colon always dreamed of being a nurse. She graduated in
1941from New York’s Lincoln School of Nursing in the Bronx, NY, the first
school in the country to train Black women to become nurses.
When she tried to sign up for the Armed Forces she was informed that the
military was not accepting Black nurses. Nancy persevered and in January
1945, she volunteered and was accepted into the Army Nurse Corps as a
reservist. Nurses of Color were not permitted into the regular Army at that
time. She was given the rank of Second Lieutenant and her first assignment
was to Lowell General Hospital, Fort Devens, Massachusetts where she
treated World War II wounded.
In 1946, Leftenant-Colon was assigned to the 332nd Station Medical Group,
Lockbourne Army Air Base (now Rickenbacker Air Force Base), Ohio. She
became the first black woman integrated into the regular Army Nurse Corps.
She was assigned at Lockbourne Army Air Field when then President Harry
Truman issued Executive Order 9981, abolishing segregation in the United
States military.
In July 1948, Leftenant-Colon was granted regular status in the Army Nurse
Corps. She became a flight nurse with the U.S. Air Force in 1952. It was in the
Air Force that she married Reserve Captain Bayard Colon.
From 1953-1955, Major Leftenant-Colon was a Flight Nurse with the 6481st
Medical Air Evacuation Group, Tachikawa, Japan. During this time, she set up
hospital wards in Japan and in active war zones. She was credited with saving
many lives during the wars.
She had to wait five years for her certification as a Flight Nurse. Major
Leftenant-Colon went on to an assignment as a Flight Nurse, evacuating
French Legionnaires from the Dien Bien Pu Province, Vietnam. She was
aboard the first medical evacuation flight into the defeated French outpost in
Dien Bien Phu. Her final assignment was to McGuire Air Force Base, New
Jersey where Major Leftenant-Colon retired as Chief Nurse in 1965.
Upon her retirement, Major Leftenant-Colon returned to Amityville High
School, Amityville, New York as the School Nurse. She held that position from
1971 – 1984. In 2018, Amityville High School authorities announced that a
new Media Center was being constructed to commemorate the life and
military service of Major Leftenant-Colon.
Dr. Nancy Leftenant-Colon was a great American, and an outstanding,
committed U.S. Army nurse who overcame unfair barriers and prejudice to
help change the course of history. I extend my sincerest condolences to her
family in the wake of this tremendous loss and share their enormous pride in
all that she accomplished.
CONGRESSIONAL RECORD – SENATE S299, REMEMBERING DR. NANCY
LEFTENANT-COLON, JANUARY 22, 2025
Honoring Robert M. Higginbotham, MD
Higginbotham Chair
A few week ago, in a !TFAM Edition, I included a spot about Tuskegee
Airmen, Inc’s Ambassador of Goodwill, Mitch Higginbotham. Mitch’s
brother Robert, was also a Tuskegee Airman.
Today, we’re sharing something special about Robert.
Robert Higginbotham II, pictured below, is telling this story and his dad.
Robert, Sr. joined the Lonely Eagles Chapter four years ago. Losing a
parent is difficult. Let’s see what junior has been up to in the past four
years…Let’s start with the beginning of the letter he wrote.
…to endow a medical school chair in orthopaedic surgery, so that it may
carry forward the values Robert lived by: service, empathy, and a
relentless pursuit of justice through health.
Congratulations Robert, you will succeed!
I’m proud of you and grateful for the good work that your dad did in his life
time, as a Tuskegee Airman and an othropedic surgeon.
Inquiring minds will want to visit the University of Pittsburgh Department
of Orthopaedic Surgery and see for themselves. This is another story TAI
members and friends of TAI can pass forward to inspire and encourage
younger feel to keep moving forward.
Robert, thank you so much for sharing this with us and giving us the
opportunity to participate in making it a reality.
That’s all for now.
love you madly!
L. Sunnye Simpson
Editor and publisher
!TFAM is a publication created by L. Sunnye Simpson and is not affiliated,
in any way, with Tuskegee Airmen Inc. Any mention of Tuskegee Airmen
Inc. is done so at the discretion of the editor.
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