As a boy growing up in an Atlanta housing project, Julius Alexander dreamed of flying the planes he saw soaring overhead. It was a distant chance for a Black boy from a working class family in the 1940s. But Alexander’s ambitions drove him beyond his earthbound circumstances.
He began taking lessons, and even after he was grounded as a young man for buzzing the campus of Morehouse College, he ended up earning a living and more in the sky.
He earned friends and mentees and became a groundbreaking teacher for a generation of young people, especially Black youths, who shared his dream.
“What flying does, it teaches you certain disciplines and it makes you special because you have something that your peer group cannot do,” Alexander told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2017. “It just does so much for their self-esteem.”
Alexander died Sept. 11 at home. He was 87 years old.
“He passed away quietly in his sleep,” his oldest daughter Karen Alexander Lewis said.
The Atlanta Raptors chapter of the Black Pilots of America wrote of him: “As a leader, educator, entrepreneur, aviator, husband, family man, and mentor to many, Mr. Alexander has given unselfishly of his time, talent, and resources. He possesses a servant’s heart and is a blessing to all who have been in his presence.”
Alexander Lewis recalled how her dad was such a bundle of energy that she was certain he had worked nearly every job under the sun at some point.
“He was like this bottomless pit, this never-ending fountain,” she said. “Sometimes you have people that pour out so much externally, but internally their own family goes lacking. And that was never the case. We got the same thing if not more at home. … It was amazing how he could be so present with us and so present with all these other people as well.”
Alexander was born in 1937 in Tuskegee, Alabama. Weeks later his family moved to Atlanta. After graduating from high school, he attended Tuskegee University, home of the famed World War II fighter pilots, the Tuskegee Airmen. He joined the Air Force ROTC program and took flying lessons. But hard times for the family meant he had to return to Atlanta and take a job as a porter at Rich’s department store. He hung tough to his dream, and he made enough to take a half-hour flying lesson every two weeks. He made his first solo flight on Jan. 22, 1956.
Credit: HANDOUT
Credit: HANDOUT
Alexander restarted his education and his flying at Morehouse College, graduating in 1959, but not before buzzing the campus and getting a tough response from the Civil Aeronautics Administration that left him grounded.
He took a job as a teacher in Atlanta, while quietly working to get back in the CAA’s good graces and earn his pilot’s license. His love and his vocation came together in 1965, when he became one of three Atlanta teachers pioneering an innovative aviation course for students.
He later formed a Civil Air Patrol cadet squadron at Price High School as he earned FAA certifications as a ground instructor, commercial pilot, multi-engine pilot, and flight instructor for single and multi-engine airplanes.
If that wasn’t enough, Alexander was freelancing photos for the Atlanta Inquirer and moonlighting as a cameraman for the TV station that is now FOX 5 Atlanta.
“I remember as a little girl, Daddy taking pictures and dropping them off at the Atlanta Inquirer office,” said Lewis. “I remember Daddy taking pictures over to Dr. [Martin Luther] King’s house while we waited in the car.”
He also flew Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson around the state.
“Can you imagine a Black politician and a Black pilot flying into a rural Georgia airport?” she said. “One time in ‘76 my dad rented a plane and flew us to Disney World for Christmas. … When the people saw we were Black, the whole reception totally changed.”
“He just never really felt there was nothing he couldn’t do or shouldn’t be able to do, even though he understood the times in which he lived,” she said. “And you know how some people do things out of bitterness. There was no bitterness in Daddy. He saw challenges as opportunities.”
Alexander became the first civilian Black flight instructor at Fulton County Airport — Brown Field, and left Atlanta schools to work for Lockheed Martin Aerospace Corporation as a publicist. He organized an aviation training program for teenagers. The National Alliance of Business contracted him to design an aviation enrichment program for young people in 1980 which became Aviation Career Enrichment (ACE), a youth program that operates a flight academy for those 9 to 18 years old. In 2013, the program moved to Brown Field.
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
ACE Board Chairman Mike Gaillard was an air traffic controller at Brown Field who met Alexander and was swept up in his personality and his passions. Under Alexander’s tutelage, Gaillard began taking flying lessons at 32 and earned a license.
“He had that ability to see inside of you and know what you wanted before you even knew it,” said Gaillard. “I don’t know how he had that ability, but he saw that in me, and that story can apply to so many people in this industry, whether they wanted to be an engineer or a mechanic or flight attendant or whatever. He saw what they wanted to be, and all you had to do is just insert name, insert title and he’d show them how to do it and motivate them to do it. He was a master motivator.”
Former student Rayjhan Bethune grew up in New York City, and like Alexander, he’d see huge planes flying overhead and dreamed of piloting them
“I wanted to be a pilot for Delta Air Lines,” he said. “So when we moved to Atlanta, I pestered my parents about letting me join the [ACE] program.”
“I remember seeing the program and meeting so many, just, influential people and that they all had one thing in common — a passion for helping people break into [the aviation] field,” he said.
Bethune is now a first officer at Delta Air Lines. Alexander’s son, Patrick, is also a Delta pilot. And the list of pilots and airlines that owe a debt to Alexander goes on and on.
“Daddy had a mission when he started ACE (Aviation Career Enrichment) in 1980, and that was to expose racial minorities to the field of aviation and to mold protégés into professionals,” daughter Julie Alexander Nixon wrote before her father’s death and after one of his students got his wings pinned on him.
“His mission has been achieved.”
In lieu of flowers, the family requests a donation to Aviation Career Enrichment, https://flyace.org/.
Visitation will be 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 19, at Murray Brothers Funeral Home (Cascade Chapel), 1199 Utoy Springs Road, SW, Atlanta.
A funeral mass will be held Friday, Sept. 20, at 11 a.m. at St. Paul of the Cross Catholic Church, 551 Harwell Road, NW, Atlanta.
A separate celebration will be held Saturday, Sept. 28, at 10 a.m. at Hill Aircraft, Fulton County Airport — Brown Field, 3948 Aviation Circle, NW, Atlanta. A missing man formation flyover is planned.
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