Oscar Wayman Holmes

WAYMAN HOLMES

January 31, 1916 - November 5, 2001

FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN NAVAL OFFICER

FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER

Oscar Wayman Holmes was born on January 31, 1916 to the late Oscar and Grace Foster Holmes in Dunbar, West Virginia. He received his early education in the segregated school system of nearby Charleston, graduating from Garnet High School at the age of 16. He majored in Chemistry in undergraduate and graduate school receiving a bachelor's degree from West Virginia State College and a master's from Ohio State University, three years later. He never liked Chemistry, however, he taught the subject for three years at Claflin College in Orangeburg, S.C. In the years following, he moved north, first to Erie, Pennsylvania where he learned to fly through the Roosevelt administration's Civilian Pilot Training Program and then trained as an air traffic controller through the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA), which led to him being assigned to the New York airway traffic control center in 1941 as an assistant controller (La Guardia Airport), thus becoming the CAA's first African American air traffic controller.

September 28, 1942 he reported for active duty at 120 Broadway after receiving an ensign's commission in the U.S. Navy. Though the Navy did not realize it until they requested a copy of his birth certificate sometime later, they had commissioned the first black officer. The Navy did not knowingly commission a black man until March, 1944. In fact black men were not officially enlisted outside of the messman's branch until June, 1942. When the realization hit them that they had commissioned a black man, they did not know what to do and decided to keep him, assigning him to sit on the Aviation Cadet Selection Board at 120 Broadway. He secured a flying assignment in 1944 - ferrying aircraft with the Naval sp,1 Air Transport Service, Air Ferry Squadron II, Terminal Island, CA. where he remained until his release from active duty in December, 1945 as a lieutenant in the Naval Reserve. In January, 1946, he returned to his old CAA job at La Guardia.

It was here in New York, Queens, Long Island that his path crossed that of a beautiful Long Island socialite from Flushing, NY., Augusta Elsie Thomas, which resulted in a union that would last for 53 years. It was the second marriage for both Oscar and Augusta.

After their marriage, and birth of two children, he went back to school at night, and in 1954 earned an LLB degree from Brooklyn Law School. He got an LLM a year later and was admitted to the New York State Bar. He began a part time law practice, but gave it up when he transferred to the FAA's Washington Headquarters in June, 1959, where he held a succession of positions, from which he retired in 1973 as a federal hearing officer and a doctor of law.

He was a member of the Squires Golf Club and the Brookland Literary and Hunting Club and held inactive membership in the Alpha Chapter of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity and the Masons.

He departed this life at his residence in Mitchellville, Maryland on the evening of Monday, November 5, 2001. He was preceded in death by his parents, Oscar Wayman, Sr. and Grace Foster Holmes, his sisters, Audrey Holmes, Mary Holmes Antoni, and Elaine Holmes Beck McCants.

He will be greatly missed and fondly remembered by his wife of 53 years, Augusta Thomas Holmes, his children Richard, Barbara, Brian and Grace Teresa, and a host of grandchildren, greatgrandchildren, relatives and friends.