experience there was the beginning of an estrangement from the family. It became apparent in following years that dogmatic religious beliefs Lewis Jr. was exposed to at school would irrevocably change the close relationship he and Charles had enjoyed.
Around the same time the decision was made for Ruth to attend Englewood, a girl's school in West Virginia. Without a female role model in the home, a controlled environment was thought best for a teenage girl. With Lewis Sr. in Gary, Charles, now eighteen years old, was for the most part left to fend for himself.
Returning to Chicago, Charles' previous academic misfortunes were reversed, because this time his new school was behind the one in Iowa.
"I didn't have to do anything for six weeks because of the difference."
With numerous temptations, the urban playground presented Charles with important choices in his young life. The street
scene was alluring and a youthful lust for life drew many young men to wine, women, and the pursuit of pleasure, particularly in the absence of a strong guiding parent in the home. The course he chose to follow had been carefully laid in his formative years and he was not inclined to deviate or indulge in the excesses of the day. He would not be distracted. Instead, he applied himself to his studies and set his sight on a college education, which he had been taught was the key to a successful future.
"All along folks kept asking what I was taking in high school. In other words, enter the college preparatory route. The difference was a lot more English, math and science. I just knew that you had to get to college."
About his social life in those days, Charles stifled a laugh. Obviously the frame of reference was very different for a teenager in the thirties versus the sixties. Patiently, he explained without specifically saying, the idea of having a social life required money. In the absence of one, you don't consider the other. What little socializing there was took place around school, chorus and glee club or church activities. Charles took odd jobs like washing and starching walls (to keep them clean) at Provident Hospital and sometimes used the money he earned to go to the movies, a rare treat.
"There was one girl I liked. She graduated in the same class. Her parents didn't want her seeing anybody `lighter' than her. Then there was another lady I made contact with, a classmate who went to the theater with me. When I left for college, we kept in touch a time or two before losing contact. I can't remember her name. Sometimes it comes back. Oh yes, her name was Emelda Charles, the only girl in her family for a couple generations."
Knowing that cooking was never one of Dad's fortes, I was curious about how he managed meals on his own. Scrambled eggs, a specialty of his, were most likely on the menu but what else? Members of the fast food generations will be appalled to know that a can of beans or soup often sufficed for a meal or late night snack.
Charles spent the year before he graduated from DuSable High School in the spring of 1938 in a spartan fashion. He made use of his time studying and as a result graduated ninth in a class of four hundred and thirty-six students. After high school, Charles planned to work for a year to make money for college. Luvinia, through connections she had, was able to get him a job with the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). In late 1938 and early 1939, Charles worked on various road and farm projects with 2664 Company in Mt. Carroll in northern Illinois and saved his money. The Corps was almost like a military camp. You got a uniform and a paycheck while you learned a skill and served the country. In Mt. Carroll, Charles worked with engineers, handling the transit and laying out contours. During that time he developed an interest in civil engineering which followed him into college.
While Charles was hard at work with Roosevelt's CCC Program, a bitter Adolf Hitler was leading the Nazi Party on a steady course of revenge for the harsh treatment Germans encountered after losing World War I. By September of that year, Hitler had taken control of Czechoslovakia, and with the help of Joseph Stalin, the Germans and Russians captured Poland. Polish Jews were being exterminated. Britain declared war on Germany and began sending troops into France. Hitler had his eyes on Norway to secure a foothold from which to launch an attack against Britain.
Rumblings of the war going on in Europe were starting to be heard in the U.S., but Charles and other young men his age were vaguely aware of them. For the most part, they were more absorbed with recovering from the depression and getting on with life in this country. The trouble abroad was too distant to have any real bearing on a young black man working to get into college.
"Even though things were building up in late '39, there was no emphasis on the war until later when the draft started in 1940."
Charles' thoughts had not yet turned skyward to imagine adventures there. Though they would become his heroes, he was unaware of Bessie Coleman’s determination to fly, which led her to France when no flying school in this country would admit a black woman, and Charles Alfred Anderson’s record as the first black to complete a transcontinental flight. He did not know of unprecedented advances made in aviation in the 1930s or that 125 black Americans held pilot licenses in 1939. In fact, nothing in his childhood or early experiences foretold what was to come. No memories of crop dusters over the sugar cane fields or stunt fliers in newsreels at the cinema. As he packed up his few belongings, took his savings and headed for Champaign-Urbana and his first year at the University of Illinois, his greatest passions in life had not yet been revealed.
II: College Years
1940-1942
•In 1940, Congress passed a law requiring all males between 21 and 35 to register for military service.
•President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 banning discrimination in companies doing business with the government and formed the Fair Employment Practice Committee.
•Against the wishes of the War Department, the U.S. Congress, bowing to pressure from Negro leaders and media, activated the first all-black Fighter Squadron at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama.
•On December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor was bombed and the United States declared war on Japan.
•Allied forces fought Italian and German forces in Northern Africa in 1942.
Black students at the University of Illinois in 1940 were few and far between. There was no housing for them on campus so most, not being locals, had to find rooms in Champaign's North End, home to the majority of the Negro population. Charles took up residence with the Brown family who lived on the corner of 6th and White Street. At first, his "room" was in the basement in a finished space by the furnace, but soon after he moved up to the second floor room with an outside entrance added to accommodate a boarder. He had a place to stay, along with his own shelf in the Browns' ice box: the basic necessities, once he provided the food.
A new engineering student on campus, he soon was introduced to a small group of fellow classmates in similar circumstances, who left the black neighborhood to cross town to the
white university, a trek that set them apart from most who lived in the North End. Bonds developed as they shared universal college experiences, from study and intellectual debates to social activities and romance.
Though Charles’ head was deep in the books, Frances Edwina Nelson was able to turn it. He never forgot the first time he saw her. She was among friends who had gathered on the college green known as the Quad. A tall, brown-skinned beauty with long legs, long hair and penetrating dark eyes, she made quite an impression.
To his great disappointment, those unforgettable eyes did not look his direction and he didn’t even manage an introduction.
The next time Charles saw Frances was following
