Thank you for your service and love for the country.
Howard Adolphus Wooten, of Lovelady Texas, grew up on his family’s ranch with the desire to become a pilot. He entered Prairie View College on a football scholarship, but Howard never gave up his hope to become an aviator.
In 1940, Howard left his studies and joined the US Army and by January 1942 he was named Staff Sergeant of the 46th Field Artillery Brigade. Through hard work and determination Howard was one step closer to making his dream of becoming a pilot a reality.
In 1944 Howard applied for the flight program at Tuskegee, graduating in December of that year from flight school. After graduation he was assigned to the 15th USAAF Brigade as a fighter pilot, in the 332nd Fighter Group. In January 1945 he was reassigned to the 477th Bombardment Group, where he was one of a select group of Tuskegee pilots who would train to fly B-25 Mitchell bombers. Wooten was transferred to Mather Field in California for additional training. Yet Wooten and the other men training on bombers would never see combat, as the war ended before they were sent overseas.
Howard left the military in 1946 and relocated to Seattle Washington with five of his siblings. Soon after he arrived, he was hired as a production worker at the Boeing Airplane Company and joined the Aeronautical Machinists Union. While working on the assembly line he met Josephine A. Stratman, another Boeing production worker. They were married in 1947.
According to the Seattle Post Intelligencer (August 1948) and The Find a Grave Database: “In 1948 the Machinists Union went on strike at Boeing. Because he and his wife had an infant, Wooten joined the Painters Union and took work painting bridges around Seattle. He died on August 20, 1948, at the age of 28, after he fell 70 feet from a scaffold while painting the 12th Avenue Bridge at the base of Beacon Hill. Howard Wooten lies in rest at Evergreen-Washelli Memorial Park in Seattle Washington.”
“Long after his death, Howard A. Wooten was memorialized by the US Air Force when his World War II pilot’s photograph was chosen by an advertising agency to represent the famed Tuskegee Airmen. His photo was first seen on Air Force recruiting posters in the 1990s and was later adopted as the official image of the Tuskegee Airmen Foundation.”
Please join us in honoring the life and service of Howard Adolphus Wooten. A grateful Nation thanks you for your service. Rest in peace as you are not forgotten. Lest We Forget.
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