Man on a mission

Rachael Levy

Saturday, Aug. 16, 1997 | 11:04 a.m.

The old bomber pilot studied the Las Vegas teenager with his baggy pants and strange haircut and wondered, could this be the one?

He glanced at the kid and skipped down his wish list for the U.S. Air Force Academy. Good eyes? Check. Healthy? Check. Smart? Check.

Russell Desvignes would give anything to pass his own list. But at 77, his body was failing, too tired and worn out to fly. He brushed the thought aside. There was no time for regrets, no place for fear.

The kid offered a second chance at a dream Russell had been trying to recapture since 1945: A brief, golden year when he was one of 926 young men who challenged the military's belief that blacks were too dumb to fly a plane.

Trained at a segregated airfield in Tuskegee, Ala., these legendary pilots weakened the Army's institutionalized racism and led the way to integration.

After ensuring equality for others, Russell returned to the segregated South at the end of World War II.

Prejudice and disappointments had scorched his dream, but thoughts of flying continued to sustain him. Russell wondered whether his dream could carry this kid to places beyond the old man's reach.

Russell hadn't always dreamed. His childhood was spent in the oppressive world of 1930s Louisiana, where poverty and prejudice strangled hopes and survival meant never questioning the division between blacks and whites.

Russell's father, Eugene, was a plasterer and his mother, Adlice, a seamstress. They had never gone to high school, but his father knew education was the road to freedom.

The stern, quiet man searched hard for work and his wife spent hours before the sewing machine in order to keep food on the family table and their children in school. Make me proud, his father told Russell, and the boy set his eyes on graduating.

The high school was an ancient, condemned building that had been abandoned by white students and teachers 20 years earlier. Bricks could be pulled from the walls, but inside a world waited to be discovered.

Geography exposed Russell to far-off lands such as California and Hawaii, a U.S. territory. Thousands of miles from the Mason-Dixon line, these places sounded foreign and exotic to the teenager.

Math challenged Russell and he delighted in crunching long division problems and algebraic equations in his mind, often arriving at the correct answer before other students had finished figuring the problem on paper.

Each state capital memorized, each algebraic shortcut learned was his forever. No one could strip him of his education like they had his dignity. Being forced to drink from a different water fountain and use a separate restroom made him feel worthless and violated. He was determined to leave.

His high school diploma opened doors to Southern black colleges, but careers in teaching and evangelism didn't interest Russell. He joined his father and uncles in construction, where racism was a hot wire that divided job sites.

A skilled older carpenter told Russell that what the apprenticeship doesn't teach him, he must "steal." And Russell's lunch hours were spent over blueprints, deciphering the architectural instructions and filing the new knowledge away.

But he still longed to get away. The opportunity arrived with a letter in the mail. The military was asking him to come to Hawaii and work in a Navy yard as a civilian laborer.

Optimism rode the tropical breezes and the sun shone down on the bustling Navy docks and airfields dotting the island rims.

Russell befriended local Filipinos, Portuguese and Samoans. But he avoided most soldiers, sailors and Marines because when they drank they forgot who the enemy was. Then boxing matches between squadrons would become racist brawls and black soldiers would surround the ring, carbines at their sides, protecting their own.

But the locals welcomed Russell into their homes, offered him a couch after a late-night party and breakfast the following day. Russell was sleeping off one Saturday night's whiskey when a giant boom sent a concussion through the air that rattled his bedroom window.

Russell stumbled out the front door, roommate on his heels, and looked toward Pearl Harbor. Anti-aircraft flak streaked overhead and smoke darkened the western edge of the sky.

A Japanese plane sped over the duplex, frantically trying to out-fly the American P-40 hot on its tail. Planes dive-bombed Hickam Field to the west and a wave of torpedo bombers advanced toward the island.

Russell ran inside and flipped on the radio. A voice calmly repeated an emergency message: Enemy air raid. This is not a drill. All civilian and military employees report to work immediately.

Russell headed down the hill to the Navy yard. Alarms rattled the air. The cruisers USS New Orleans and USS Honolulu fired on a group of 10 planes flying high over the harbor.

Russell hurried to his station near a dry dock. He was pointed toward a mountain of hose near two destroyers and a battleship.

Twenty-five to a line, men aimed gallons of water on one of the destroyers. The warship had been hit by a bomb, leaving a gaping hole in its side and ignited an oil fire.

Behind Russell, flames licked at oily water. Japanese planes dropped from the sky. A U.S. rescue boat capsized and tossed its crew into the water.

The battleship USS Arizona's bow was blown away and the USS Nevada lay grounded off the Naval Hospital point, deliberately marooned in order to prevent it from sinking.

Amid the carnage, Russell's mind went on automatic. He knew that strong emotions would make his job more difficult, so he blocked out his fear.

The acrid smoke stung Russell's eyes. The destroyer's warheads exploded and burning fragments rained down on the two ships nearby.

By 10:45 a.m., Russell's crew had extinguished the fire on the two destroyers, now buckled and warped, the first beyond repair. The waves of enemy aircraft ebbed, and a Japanese plane left a trail of smoke as it fled the harbor.

Russell picked up scraps of twisted metal, broken chairs and other debris. Sailors had to be cut out of ships' hulls. Russell kept working until someone told him to go home, shower and get a bite to eat.

He returned that night, though many civilian workers didn't. Russell felt safer at the harbor, with its charred ships and their big guns.

He worked for three straight months, grimly following sailors into bombed hangars and buildings to wash down the walls after the dead were removed. Not thinking, not feeling, he slept hard and rarely dreamed.

Sailors, Marines and soldiers were leaving for combat and an air station on Oahu Island was short-staffed. Russell asked for a transfer to a Marine Air Station and became a traffic manager.

The road to work neared the runway and Russell would pull over as the fighter planes took off. The Corsairs gathered speed and waves of planes would create formations in the sky. All in unison, an aerial ballet.

Outside Russell's office, heat waves rose off the tarmac and gas fumes hung thick in the air. He watched the planes, but rarely spoke to the pilots.

During his lunch hour the planes sat idle. Civilian employees weren't allowed onto the tarmac, but the advice from his carpenter's apprenticeship came to him: What you aren't taught, you must "steal."

Russell stepped onto the runway, hoisted himself onto the Corsair's wing and lowered into the small cockpit. Buttons and dials covered the front panel -- engine gauges, navigational instruments, the compass and horizon indicator.

He sat down in the pilot's seat and stared, growing dizzy wondering how the instruments worked. His hand reached out ... and ... not really believing it ... fingers brushed a row of buttons.

Russell knew then he wanted to fly.

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