“Living a whole life” typically means that a person has had a life rich in experiences, achievements, relationships, and personal growth. In honor of Veterans Day, the Banner spoke to one of our most famous veterans, Brigadier General Enoch “Woody” Woodhouse. He is an Air Force veteran and a member of the Tuskegee Airmen, one of the most famous all-Black regiments in our armed services history.
At 97 years young, the Boston English High School and Yale University graduate is still going strong with more honors bestowed upon him by President Biden and trips worldwide, including a celebratory visit to France for the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion in Normandy. General Woodhouse brings a vibrant and no-nonsense approach to his verbal memoir. His journey and recollection of his early military life are both inspirational and traumatic, starting with an ominous train ride from Boston and a few dollars on his person. “I left my house with $8 in my pocket, going from my house in Roxbury to Texas. I went all the way to St Louis on the train with my other white high school classmates. We were ready to leave the rail station at St. Louis, Missouri, and as we were about to pull off, the conductor comes and tells me to get off the train.”
He then explained that he was waiting at the station by himself until a Black porter approached him. “He said, ‘Son, what are you doing here?’ I said, ‘They kicked me off the train.’ He said, ‘Don’t you know we don’t ride that train?’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘Son, have you ever been South before?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I was in New York.’”
Jokingly, the porter asked him if he had ever been in the Deep South because “we don’t ride those trains; wait here, and your train will be coming along the train we ride.” Being unable to get to a store, the general explained that the porter fed him with a piece of chicken and an apple until his train arrived hours later.
Further, because the train had to pick up Black soldiers who could not take the other trains, it frequently stopped to drop off coal, and Woody was eight hours late getting to the base. To make matters worse, he said, “if you do not report on your point of time and date, you’re considered to be AWOL, and during wartime, that’s considered desertion.” Of course, the superior had no pity for him. “So there I was coming, reporting to this white drill sergeant. And I came through the cellar. My uniform was dirty, caked with soot, and he ran me up and down the line and called me every name except a child of God.”
Black soldiers on the base squadrons weren’t doing much in the way of the military training. “Our mission was not soldiering. It was housekeeping. We plowed the streets, refueled the plane, cleaned the streets, drove the trucks, and cleaned the buildings. “ He could type and was given a job in the office. However, Woody’s truck driving enabled him to work in a different capacity on base when he was transferred to the Air Corps base in Ogden, Utah. “When you were driving a motor pool, you didn’t have to wear smelly fatigues. You had on your nice, classy uniform with your necktie, and you sat in the motor pool lounge, awaiting a call. So you’d have officers coming in from the flight line. You’d pick them up and you drive them to Salt Lake City or wherever you were going, but you sat in the motor pool.” General Woodhouse parlayed that job into the officers’ club support staff.
“I worked in the offices club as a waiter, and that meant that you could have your bag and you could bring home steaks, maybe some leftovers that someone didn’t eat because everything was better.” He pointed out that the club could have regular meals with real meat instead of the horsemeat they served Black soldiers. He also mentioned the lack of spiritual involvement of the Black troops. This was especially troubling because he was the son of an African Methodist Episcopal minister in Roxbury. “The spiritual development of the Black man in the 40s in the military was non-existent. We had a few Black chaplains, but I never saw them. They wouldn’t send a chaplain to oversee 80 or 90 or 100 people.”
The General took up reading the classics, leading to his transfer to the Tuskegee Airmen. He carried a copy of Dante’s “Inferno” and his Bible for inspiration. He accidentally left the book in a room, and even though it belonged to him, he was skeptical of the white officers accusing him of stealing it, so he remained silent. An officer from Chicago introduced himself and asked him, “Are you reading this book,? ( knowing it was his) I’m Secretary of the screening board for Officer Candidate School. I’ll have an application for you.”
The young Woodhouse likened the experience to “hearing someone playing a beautiful classical piece. You look in, and you see who’s playing it; regardless of who’s playing it, you want to know that person.”
That Chicagoan wanted to know Enoch Woodhouse, and he was on his way to officer school. Although at 19, he did not train at Tuskegee, he gained a private flying license on his own. He did not get to fly planes in the unit because he did not have military credentials. “In school, he received training as a fiscal officer and was the paymaster to many bases. He told the magazine, “You’re the guy that everyone has to see if they want their money.”
After the war, many of his colleagues had sufficient training and battle experience (flying 2,000 hours and up) but were only allowed to fly cargo planes because of racism. General Woodhouse said throughout all these problematic experiences, “No matter how bad things are, you can try to get out of it, or if you can’t get out of it to make the best of it, you have to have that mantra.”
He kept that slogan in mind when applying to college as an Air Force reservist in 1949 and was “the first person to be accepted and graduate from Yale, from a public school in almost 40 years.”
He felt the isolation immediately upon landing on campus and said, “I didn’t see another Black person until graduation day.” He also couldn’t find a roommate, and because of the bigotry he experienced, he ended up with a suite by himself. He accepted the microaggressions, like nasty notes slid under his door, which he said he should have kept but destroyed.
Again, these incidents never deterred the General from his goals of thriving and surviving in this country. His Yale years included a junior year in Paris to study at the Sorbonne. More education followed, including graduation from Boston University Law School. He worked as an attorney in the public and private sectors for more than 40 years in The Hub.
In 2007, President Bush awarded him the Congressional Gold Medal for his military service during a ceremony at Logan Airport, where his mural was unveiled in Terminal C. Enoch Woodhouse was appointed a brigadier general to the Massachusetts Militia by Governor Charlie Baker.
During that ceremony, Woodhouse said, “We were the greatest generation because we all served our country. All of us, together.”
As he approaches 100 years of age, General Woodhouse serves us as a living historical figure and an example of perseverance and grit.
