Navy to name destroyer after Korean War hero from Concord

From Boston.com: Navy to name destroyer after Korean War hero from Concord
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WASHINGTON - In a rare honor for a living person, the Navy plans to announce it is naming a new destroyer after Fall River native Thomas J. Hudner, who earned the Medal of Honor in the Korean War for intentionally crashing his fighter plane in an attempt to save his wingman, the Navy’s first African-American pilot.<P>
The decision, made by Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, is the culmination of a swift lobbying campaign championed by Senators Scott Brown and John F. Kerry to honor the 87-year-old Concord resident and retired Navy captain.<P>
Brown’s office told the Globe it was informed of the decision by the Navy on Monday.<P>

The move, the lawmakers argued, would bring well-earned recognition to Hudner, who later served in the Vietnam War and as Massachusetts commissioner of veterans affairs, and also to his wingman, Jesse L. Brown, a native of Mississippi who overcame fierce prejudice to become the Navy’s first black fighter pilot.<P>
At the time of the incident, during the Battle of Chosin Reservoir in December 1950, the armed forces had been integrated for only two years.<P>
Critics of desegregating the ranks continued to raise doubts that men of different color would risk their lives for each other.<P>
Hudner’s actions when Brown’s plane was shot down in a snow-covered valley behind enemy lines proved those critics wrong.<P>
“The only thing to do was go down and get Jesse,’’ Hudner told the Globe last month. “I didn’t agonize over it at all because I’d made up my mind. Jesse and I weren’t that close, but he was a good man.’’<P>
Brown, trapped in the burning wreckage of his Corsair, could not be freed, and as darkness descended, Hudner had to leave him behind.<P>
“Tell Daisy I love her,’’ Brown said of his wife before losing consciousness.
After the war, Hudner received letters from strangers thanking him for what he had done.<P>
One came from an African-American who wrote: “I never thought that would happen. I never thought that a white man would help out a black man like that.’’