PHOENIX – One of the last surviving Tuskegee Airmen, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Robert Ashby, passed away on Friday, March 5 at his Sun City home.
Lt. Col. Robert Ashby was born in Yemasse, South Carolina in 1925. He entered the U.S. Air Corps in 1944, and graduated as a 2nd Lieutenant in 1945 as one of the original Tuskegee Airmen.
Lt. Col. Robert Ashby retired in 1965 and began civilian career as a Flight Operation Instructor with United Airlines. In 1972, he joined Frontier Airlines as the first black pilot to fly for a commercial airline. He retired as Captain in 1986.
Ashby is said to have opened the door for all African Americans who are pilots today because he was the first black captain for a commercial airline after WWII.
“Out of 992 pilots that went through the Tuskegee experience, Ashby is the only pilot to become an airline pilot after that era,” Retired colonel and Arizona Tuskegee member Larry Jackson said of Ashby in 2018. “There are over 2,000 African Americans flying in commercial flights around the world today out of about 140,000, but there were none after WWII except for Ashby. The country has come a long way since then.”