National Museum of Patriotism's Board of Directors

CHARLES W. DRYDEN

Lieutenant Colonel Charles W. Dryden (USAF - Retired) was born on September 16, 1920, in New York City to Jamaican parents, Charles Levi Tucker Dryden and Violet Buckley Dryden.He graduated from Peter Stuyvesant High School and earned a BA in Political Science from Hofstra University and an MA in Public Law and Government from Columbia University. In 1996 he was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters by Hofstra University.

In August 1941 he was selected for Aviation Cadet training at the Tuskegee Army Flying School in Alabama. He was commissioned on April 29, 1942 as a Second Lieutenant in a class of only three graduates, which was the second class of black pilots to graduate in the history of the US. Army Air Corps. He was a member of the famed 99th Pursuit Squadron, later the 332 Fighter Group, which served in North Africa, Sicily and Italy during World War II:

On June 9, 1943, then Lieutenant Charles Dryden, in his P-40 nicknamed “A-Train,” led a flight of six pilots engaging enemy fighter aircraft in aerial combat over Pantelleria, Sicily. It was the first time in aviation history that black American pilots of the US Army Air Corps engaged aircraft in combat.

Colonel Dryden's 21-year military career also included combat missions in Korea and duty assignments in Japan, Germany and ten different bases in the United States. He also served as a Professor of Air Science at Howard University and retired in 1962 as a Command pilot with 4,000 hours flying time.

A member of the board of directors of the Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame he also is a member of the Atlanta Metro Lions Club, Quality Living Services (a Senior Citizens organization) and the Atlanta Chapter-Tuskegee Airmen, Inc. (ACTAI), which he helped found in 1978 and which he served as president, vice president (twice), and national convention committee chairman in 1980 and 1995.

He has been inducted into the Honorable Orders of the Daedalians, the Kentucky Colonels and the Palmetto Gentlemen of South Carolina. In 1998 Colonel Dryden was inducted into the Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame. His autobiography was published by the University of Alabama Press in 1997 with the title “A-Train: Memoirs of a Tuskegee Airman.” Also, in 1997, he was designated an Outstanding Georgia Citizen by the Secretary of State.

Colonel Dryden has three sons, by a former marriage. His wife, Marymal Morgan Dryden, has three sons and a daughter, also by a former marriage. Between them they have five grandchildren.

Colonel Dryden and spouse reside in Atlanta.