Retired FDNY Lt. John Mulzac, a Tuskegee Airman who took to the skies in three wars, died this week.
He was 91.
Mulzac, a Brooklyn resident who was affectionately called Daddy John, was an original member of the elite Tuskegee Airmen, a group of 994 pilots who in World War II became the first African-American aviators in the history of the U.S. armed forces.
To his family, Mulzac, who died Sunday, was also a prankster and storyteller whose barrier-breaking history spoke for itself. But it was a tale the Bedford-Stuyvesant man enjoyed sharing nonetheless.
“They said that we could never fly airplanes, were not capable of flying airplanes,” Mulzac recounted to an auditorium of students at St. Saviour High School in Brooklyn in 2001. “But there were some people on our side.” The heroism shown by the Tuskegee Airmen is said to have influenced President Harry S. Truman’s decision to desegregate the military in 1948. The airmen were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2006, the highest honor bestowed by Congress.
“Despite the tough times of segregation he went through, he always felt this was the best country in the world,” said son Henry Mulzac, 60, a retired NYPD detective. “He was so grateful for what this country did for him and felt the service was worth it.”The pioneering pilot moved from manning flight controls to manning fire hoses when he became a smoke eater for the FDNY in 1947. He also started a family with his wife Beatrice, who pinned on his pilot wings at his graduation from the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama in 1944. When the country called on Mulzac again, he left the firehouse to fly missions in the Korean and Vietnam wars as a reservist.
He retired from the Fire Department in 1967 as a lieutenant, then worked as a sky marshal and as a U.S. Customs inspector before retiring for good to concentrate on his role as the patriarch of a sprawling brood of eight children, 22 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren, his family said.
Mulzac, who died Sunday, is survived by his wife, eight children, 22 grandchildren and eight greatgrandchildren.
“He was a man of integrity and he loved his children, and in his life he wanted to see them all get an education and strive for the best,” wife Beatrice Mulzac, 88, said Thursday at his wake.
That drive was an inspiration for the success of his family. His son Robert Mulzac followed in his father’s footsteps and is a retired FDNY lieutenant. Two of his grandkids, Channing Frye and Tobias Harris, play NBA ball for the Orlando Magic.
“What an inspiration. I knew I could do and be whatever because of him,” his daughter, Karen Mulzac-Frye said after Mulzac’s wake.“Now that he’s gone, I’ve got to work even harder.”
