Nassau street name change honors late Hempstead resident and Tuskegee pilot

A stretch of Charles Lindbergh Boulevard is now “William M. Wheeler Way,” honoring a longtime Hempstead resident who as one of the acclaimed Tuskegee Airmen helped shatter the U.S. military’s ban on Black pilots.

Wheeler died in 2011, but his sons, grandchildren and great-grandchildren were on hand Wednesday outside the Cradle of Aviation Museum, where Nassau County Executive Laura Curran oversaw the naming, which is near Earle Ovington Boulevard.

Wheeler, who was part of the Tuskegee Airmen speakers bureau long after leaving the military in 1945, was among the 994 participants in the groundbreaking aviation program during World War II.

“Before the program began, in 1941, the military refused to allow Blacks to even apply for aviation training. They faced down discrimination and racism while they were defending our freedoms around the world,” Curran said, noting that Thursday would have been Wheeler's 97th birthday. “So we owe an incredible debt of gratitude to men like Lieutenant Wheeler who really started it all. They allowed our country to live up its ideals.”

As is typical in ceremonial namings of all sorts, the naming does not change the official name of the roadway, according to the county legislature’s resolution.

Daniel Haulman, author of “The Tuskegee Airmen Chronology: A Detailed Timeline of the Red Tails and Other Black Pilots of World War II,” said Wheeler graduated in class 44C-SE on March 12, 1944, as a second lieutenant, with a hometown listed in military records as Detroit.

In March 1944, he earned his wings at Tuskegee Army Flight School as a fighter pilot, according to records kept at Tuskegee University, and went on to serve in Italy, flying a P-51 Mustang with the 302nd Fighter Squadron of the all-Black 332nd Fighter Group. Wheeler was grounded, after a half dozen missions, because of a medical ailment.

Wheeler's middle son, Derek, said his dad would have been interested in developments over the last few years like the Black Lives Matter movement.

“There is a straight line between the Black Lives Matter folks and other important groups such as Tuskegee Airmen. They’re all part of the same struggle,” Derek Wheeler said at Wednesday’s naming ceremony. “We’re all trying to live in these United States of America with equal rights and equal opportunities.”

In an interview with Newsday about a decade ago, William Wheeler recalled being en route to training and being forced to sit in Jim Crow seating on the train that carried him down south from Washington, D.C.; Black passengers were forced to sit behind the train’s sooty engine and coal car.

“I tell people that when I left Washington, I was brown, but by the time I got to Keesler Field, I was Black, as were all of my possessions,” he told Newsday, referring to a post where he went for basic training in Biloxi, Mississippi.

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.