Meek G. Stalling 
Tuskegee Airman

June 20,1921 – July 28,1998

 The Tuskegee Airmen, was a group of African-American pilots and support personnel during World War II that helped set the stage for racial integration of the nation's military forces.

Stalling's strong interest in aviation meant he wanted to join the Army Air Force when the United States entered World War II. But blacks weren't allowed in the regular forces. According to his son, Charles A.Stalling talked his way into joining in 1942 an experimental Air Force group for black soldiers, based at Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama. The group's accomplishments made it part of military and African-American history.

After the war, he returned to Duluth and earned a trade-school degree. In Milwaukee, he worked in electrical technician jobs before retiring in 1987. He also was a self-employed cabinetmaker and carpenter.

At the helm of USS Tripoli (LPH-10) US Naval helicopter landing pad during "Tiger Cruise"  l-r: son AMH-3 Charles A. Stalling, brother Charles M., Meek G., and nephew Vincent E. Stalling

l-r: Meek G. Stalling and brother Charles on flight deck of USS Tripoli
(LPH-10)

-photo courtesy of Charles A. Stalling

The WWII crowd is gradually fading away. These are the people who personally performed, before & after WWII, the many civilian and military prototypes we model and fly.

Meek Gladney Stalling of Milwaukee, WI is another such resource that has passed, dying on July 28,1998 of complications from heart bypass surgery seven weeks earlier.

 Stalling was born in 1921 and raised in Duluth, Minnesota, a very uncommon venue for an African-American, especially then. He grew up in the bitter, sub-zero winter where Duluth-Superior Bay of Lake Superior froze and sent cannon booms echoing off the hills as the ice cracked and rubbed against itself.

Like many American boys, he was electrified by the feat of Charles Lindberg flying solo across the Atlantic in 1927, which inspired him to be a model airplane enthusiast. In spite of the economic squeeze of the depression during the 1930s, he did whatever odd jobs he could to buy rubber powered model airplane kits, build them, and compete. In a 1997 visit to the AMA Museum in Muncie, IN, he recognized almost every rubber-powered kit on display in the "hobby shop" mock-up found in the museum.

In the later 1930s he managed to buy gas engines and advanced to that aspect of free flight. In the AMA museum he could name on sight almost every engine of the 1930s era. Throughout his WWII service, Meek always was part of the base model airplane club, and made it a point to visit hobby shops in every city through which he passed, including the famed Polk hobby shop in New York City.

As WWII approached, Stalling made a decision to volunteer before being drafted, so that he might get to pick his branch of service, the Army Air Corps. That plan worked and he was sent to Lincoln, NE to become an aircraft carburetor mechanic.

Being a northern boy, it was disappointing that official policy of the United States military was to segregate all troops by race. The North may have won the Civil War, but the South muted the victory in decades following by taking over Congress through the seniority system. The US military was run on Southern rules. On the other hand, assigned to an all-Black outfit, it was nice to be the majority for once.

Throughout the past 18 years of national event judging Meek was twice at Lincoln, and three times at Westover AFB in Springfield, MA another base where he served. The memories would flood back as we drove onto the base; Meek recalled his arrival in Lincoln in 1942. It was the dead of winter, & he remarked how his upbringing in Duluth did not prepare him for the cold march of several miles from the train station to the base.

The National preparation for war was intense. Mechanics school in Lincoln ran 24 hours a day, and Meek pulled the Midnight to dawn shift. His class was at their benches all night long standing, while listening, fighting sleepiness, assembling, disassembling and then troubleshooting. It was rigorous.

Then Meek's big break came. It was official US military policy that all Black soldiers would be kept away from the front lines. Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of the President, lobbied to change this policy. If "Negroes" were not allowed to take the same risks as everybody else, that would be held against them in the future. President Roosevelt agreed, and one of the results was the creation of the pilot training school at Tuskegee Institute, a Black college in Alabama.

Meek applied and passed the test, even though he did not have a college degree. He credits his achievement to the first rate K-12 education he received courtesy of the Minnesota Public Schools of the 1930s. At Tuskegee he took various navigation and aircraft systems courses while learning to fly, first in single engine trainers, then for aerobatics on 600 hp Stearman biplanes. He was disappointed that he did not advance beyond the "bipes" to fighter pilot. Those of his class that did, ended up flying B-24 bomber escort missions from Italy over southern Europe to such targets as the Ploesti oil fields in Romania.

The "red-tailed" squadron first flew with P-40s, then with P-51s. Meek was returned to aircraft mechanic status and served mostly in western Massachusetts at Westover, the big base where aircraft went to and from Europe. Meek serviced B-24 bombers, but he specialized in P-40 Warhawks. One time he was able to sit in the cockpit and run up both engines on a P-38 Lightning as it was being serviced. " Powerful!"

When Meek left WWII his spirit brightened, reflecting that a poor kid from Minnesota had been trained at government expense to be an aircraft mechanic and a pilot. On the G.I. bill he became a car mechanic, working first at Duluth Cadillac, and then migrating to Milwaukee in 1954, working at Doering Dodge.

Meek became a regular at the Al Secklin hobby shop on 28th and North Ave., and later bought a full scale Cessna with three other pilots. They took turns flying to some of their favorite weekend jaunts at West Bend and Hartford, WI, and Gary, IN. With Jimmy Greer of Chicago, he also flew cross-country to conventions of the Negro Airmen International, another organization supporting aviation. Jimmy was a nationally known RC pattern competitor in the 1970s.

In the past years, Meek became active again in the Tuskegee Airmen group, and helped found the Milwaukee chapter. The object is not to keep re-glorifying WWII, but to guide young men and women into aviation careers, including the military. Meek always took a turn at the Aviation Career Fair held each spring at General Mitchell Intl. Airport in Milwaukee.

Stalling did his part for the Apollo phase of the space program. Leaving his secure position as a car mechanic to work first at the Allis Chalmer pyrometry laboratory, he parlayed that experience to join the AC Spark Plug division of GM, which designed and built rocket sub-assemblies. That division became Delco Electronics, he also worked on the aircraft inertial navigation system produced by Delco called "Carousel IV." The Carousel is still very common on most Boeing 747s in operation today. That division now produces computers for cars.

At Delco all his skills as a modeler, mechanic, and woodworker came to bear as Stalling hand built, from engineered specs, the one or two of a kind test stand equipment pieces that would monitor the production of these electronic assemblies. His pieces were used at GM plants in Oak Creek, WI, and Kokomo, IN. Meek retired from GM in 1987 after nearly 30 years of service.

Meek is survived by his wife, Ruby, son Charles & Wife SB, and is memorialzed in his grandson Meek G. Stalling (born October 1999) who live in Minneapolis. To his family and the congregation in which he was very active, St. Marks African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church condolences, and memorials.