Two Tuskegee Airmen die on the same day

Clarence E. Huntley Jr. — a quiet man who worked for a decade as a skycap in the 1950s at then Lockheed Air Terminal, which is now Bob Hope Airport — passed away at his home in Los Angeles earlier this month. It was the same day his lifelong friend, Joseph Shambrey, also died at his home.

Both men were members of the Tuskegee Airmen, the name given to the African American pilots and air crew members who served in segregated Army units during World War II.

“They grew up together. They enlisted together. They went to Tuskegee together. They were shipped overseas together. They served in the same squadron together,” said Huntley’s daughter, Shelia McGee of Los Angeles.

And both men died on the same day — Jan. 5 — at 91 years old, she added.

“I don’t know which one went first, but whoever went first came and got the other,” McGee said.

Ron Brewington, president of the Los Angeles chapter of Tuskegee Airmen Inc., said both men served with the 100th Fighter Squadron, 332nd Fighter Group of the Army Air Force. Huntley was a crew chief on P-51 aircraft and Shambrey was responsible for maintaining the weapons, he said.

“They loved their airplanes,” Brewington said. “They took care of their airplanes.”

In fact, Huntley earned the nickname “Mother” from the squadron commander Capt. Andrew Turner for the care he took of Turner’s P-51 named “Skipper’s Darlin’ III,” McGee said.

Whenever Turner would ask about the plane, McGee said Huntley would say, “She’s humming like a bird.”

But McGee said her father didn’t talk much about his service after the war, though he did say he was trained in Tuskegee. She said she realized what that meant only after the television movie “The Tuskegee Airmen” aired in 1995.

When she called from Baltimore to ask her father why he’d never mentioned it, he said, “What was there for me to say? I was doing what I was supposed to do, and that was serving my country.”

Harry Mallett, Huntley’s cousin, worked with both men. He worked with Huntley during the years they worked as skycaps. He met Shambrey, a Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation employee at the time, while working security at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Mallett, 82, said he didn’t learn of Huntley’s membership in the famed African American flying unit until after Huntley retired in his late 80s.

“I just found out last night that Joe Shambrey was a Tuskegee Airman,” Mallett said on Tuesday, adding that he heard about it from a relative at Huntley’s house.

As a Korean War veteran himself, Mallett said he rarely discussed his own experiences in the Army. However, he said he valued the contributions of the Tuskegee Airmen to the war effort because, as a black man, he knew the type of discrimination they faced at the time.

By contrast, he recalled visiting the Palm Springs Air Museum with Huntley about a year ago.

“It made me feel like a celebrity when I was with him,” Mallett said.

Brewington said there were an estimated 16,000 to 19,000 Tuskegee Airmen, but it’s unknown how many are still living. There are 20 documented original Tuskegee Airmen still living in the Los Angeles area, according to his chapter’s records.

After about a decade at the Burbank airfield, McGee said Huntley went on to work for about 50 years at Los Angeles International Airport, retiring in his late 80s.

“He loved what he did,” she said.