
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, July 25, 1994                   TAG: 9407260015
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: PENSACOLA, FLA.                                LENGTH: Short

BLACK AVIATOR'S NAMESAKE FACES NAVY FAREWELL

Pride will be tinged with disappointment at a ceremony for the USS Jesse L. Brown. The warship named for the Navy's first black aviator, the first ship the Navy named for a black officer, is being decommissioned.

The disappointment is shared by the family of Ensign Jesse L. Brown, killed in action during the Korean War, and his former wingman, Thomas Hudner.

Hudner, a retired Navy captain, won the Medal of Honor for a heroic but futile attempt to rescue Brown from the wreckage of his downed plane in enemy territory.

``I can't believe the Navy would have done it,'' Hudner said in a telephone interview from his home in Concord, Mass. ``We need everything we can in race relations.''

The ship is to be decommissioned Wednesday at Pensacola Naval Air Station, where Brown received flight training. It's one of two frigates being turned over to the Egyptian navy.

Brown's widow, Daisy Thorne of Hattiesburg, Miss., attended the ship's commissioning in 1973.

``I am saddened that there will no longer be a USS Jesse Brown,'' Thorne said. ``We were very proud of that ship. We kept up with it.''

More than 150 members of Brown's family held a reunion on the ship in 1992 when it was based at Charleston, S.C. Thorne visited it again after it moved to Mobile, Ala. It came to Pensacola this year.

The Navy is considering naming another vessel for Brown, said Lt. j.g John Rec, the ship's spokesman.

by CNB