"Cornelius Robinson Coffey"(6-9-1903-March 2,1994)

Was born in Newport,Arkansas just months before the Wright brothers' initial flight.His family

moved to Omaha,Nebraska when he was a teenager.His father a widower with three children,worked for the railroad.Cornelius became "hooked" on aviation after he took his first airplane ride when he was 13.Cornelius went to Chicago to work in 1919,supporting himself himself by repairing cars and motorcycles.In 1925 he enrolled in a trade school on the South Side of Chicago to study automobile mechanics.John Robinson a friend of Cornelius shared a similar desire to fly.Commerical flying schools would not accept them because of their race,but an African America businessman lent the two a vacant storefront where they built a one-seat airplane powdered by a motorcycle engine.They then taught themselves to fly.Emil Mack employed the two as auto mechanics.He was a white man who owned a Chevrolet dealership in Elmwood Park Illinois,when they applied and were accepted at the Curtiss Wright School of Aviation in Chicago for an aviation mechanics-training course.Upon reporting to the school for the start of classes,Cornelius and John were refused admittance when it was discovered they were African American.The school attempted to reimburse the two for their tuition,Emil,threatened to sue the school if they were not allowed to enter.The school backed down and allowed Cornelius and John to attend.Two years later they graduated at the top of their class.Cornelius was the first African American to hold both a pilot's license and mechanic's license in America.He obtained his commercial license on August 15,1938 (#36609) in the late 1930s,Cornelius established the Coffey School of Aeronautics at Harlem Airport,located South of Chicago at 87th Street and Harlem Avenue.From 1938 to 1945 more than 1,5000 African American students went through the school,including many who would later become Tuskegee Airmen.After World War II,Cornelius served as an instructor at the Lewis School of Aeronautics in Lockport,and then at Dunbar Vocational High School in Chicago,training school some of the first African Americans to be hired as mechanics by commercial airlines.Cornelius left teaching in 1969,he was no means retired.His experience and skills kept him employed in Illinois as A&P aircraft inspector (AI)for decades.Cornelius received the Charles Taylor Mechanic Award and a foundation was established in his name at American Airlines maintence school in Chicago.His last application for renewal of his certification as an AI in 1993 was one year before his death at 91.Cornelius was a recipient of the "Charles Taylor Master Mechanic Award" from the Federal Aviation Administration and was the first African American to have an aerial navigation intersection named after them by the FAA (the "Coffey Fix," a viewpoint located on the VICTOR 7 airway over Lake Calumet,provides electronic course guidance to Chicago Midway Airport Runway 31 Left).He also design a carburetor heater that prevented icing and allowed airplanes to fly in all kinds of weather.Devices similar to his are still in use today.