Education spurs brothers to new heights
The Wilson family in northeastern Louisiana had a deep love of education that helped three of its sons become colonels in the U.S. Army. Bonnie Bolden/The News-Star
Opportunities for African-Americans in the Delta were limited during the Jim Crow era, particularly if they didn't have access to a good education. The Wilson family encouraged education for all eight children, and three of the brothers went on to retire from the U.S. Army as colonels.
"It's unique. My oldest brother was a colonel — full colonel.That's one step from a general, and a lieutenant colonel is two steps from a general. You don't find three brothers in one family, whether it's a black family or a white family, where three colonels come out of one family," Wilson W. Wilson said.
Johnny M. Wilson Sr. retired as a colonel, while Oliver W. Wilson and Wilson W. Wilson retired as lieutenant colonels.
The fourth brother, Cecil, did not join the military but did work on planes during the Vietnam War. Wilson said Cecil rehabilitated Navy aircraft in California after the aircraft were shot in Vietnam.
Phillip and Christel Wilson decided their eight children — four boys and four girls — would learn. The couple lived in Guthrie, a small community in northern Ouachita Parish.
Wilson W. Wilson said his father was a farmer who did miscellaneous jobs, like pipeline work. During World War II, California was booming, and he went to work at a factory that made pasteboard boxes. The job required knowledge of fractions, and Phillip didn't know how to do the math. A man from Monroe, Mr. Mills, would cut Phillip's patterns daily, and when Phillip returned to Louisiana, he told Christel to make sure his kids were educated.
Phillip died in 1947, within two years of returning from the West Coast, because of heart complications. Wilson was 5. Although Philip could read and write, Wilson still isn't sure whether his dad had a high school diploma. Nonetheless, he was the impetus for education in the family.
Christel studied teaching in the 1920s before she married Phillip, who was 15 years her senior. After Phillip's death, she moved the family to Perryville, a small town on the border of Morehouse and Ouachita parishes. She went back to teaching in the classroom.
In the late 1940s, Louisiana started legally requiring teachers to have a four-year degree. Christel only had a high school diploma.
She studied at Grambling State University on weekends and over the summer while raising eight children and managing the family farm.
Wilson's oldest brother, Johnny, played football under Eddie Robinson at GSU. He graduated the same year as Christel.
Christel went on to teach at Sterlington High School, followed by Myles High School, which were black high schools in Sterlington. Wilson graduated from Myles in 1960.
"My original aim was to be a doctor, and when I graduated from high school in Sterlington, the highest math offered was Algebra I. My mother sent me to a high school in Mer Rouge — Union High, I think it was, in Mer Rouge. It was a black high school in Mer Rouge. Because they offered higher-level maths. They offered chemistry and physics. ...They went to school in the summer so they could pick cotton in the fall, so when I graduated, I went to Union High to take additional math and science, getting ready for Southern in September, but it was too little too late," Wilson said.
He enrolled as a pre-med student but quickly found he didn't have the background to be competitive with the other students.
"So this thing of education is very important. Without it, a student is limited with what they can achieve. We tell students 'you can be anything you want to be.' Well, I say you can be anything you want to be with the right preparation. You can't be anything you want to be unless you are prepared," Wilson said.
Instead, Wilson changed his major to education.
Christel built a house in Monroe in 1960. Only she and her two youngest daughters were living together after Wilson left for college. She continued teaching at Swartz Elementary until she retired.
Johnny, who is 14 years older than Wilson, was the first to leave home. After graduation, he was drafted and served during the Korean War.
Johnny was stationed at Camp Chaffee in Arkansas and taught geometry to the artillery.
"So he avoided going to Korea because of his brain," Wilson said. "That's me. That's not official."
Johnny was sent to observe atomic bomb tests at the Nevada Test Site during his tenure.
"They sent soldiers out to these blasts. They didn't know it was harmful at the time, but still they sent soldiers," Wilson said.
Johnny retired but stayed in the reserves, eventually being promoted to full colonel in the 1980s.
Oliver, who was seven years younger than Johnny, went to Southern University in Baton Rouge and took part in the ROTC program. He entered the Army as a second lieutenant after graduation.
"I idolized him, and I liked the uniform, so I wanted to go to Southern," Wilson quipped.
He followed Oliver to Southern, earned his degree in education and went through ROTC and into the Army. He met his wife, Georgia, while attending Southern. Wilson entered the Army two weeks after college graduation in 1964.
"Black people didn't have access to the professions like you have access to professions now. I didn't even know what an engineer was when I went to college, so how could I have been an engineer if I didn't know it existed? I say that to say that your choices was limited. Teaching, I would say is the No. 1 profession for blacks graduating in the '50s and '60s," Wilson said.
"So I went in the Army as a profession. I didn't intend to get out. I intended to make general. However, I didn't know it at the time, but that was kind of wishful thinking. If I recall correctly in 1964, when I went in the Army, there were eight black colonels.
"Well, you've got to make colonel before you make general, and if I had done some math, I'd have figured out my chances of making general were very, very slight."
In the Army
Wilson served back-to-back tours in Vietnam. He was stationed south of Saigon both times. Wilson said he's always been a Christian. His mother gave him a copy of Psalm 91 before he went to Vietnam. The verses, he said, have become dear to him.
He was on his way back for a third tour when the war ended.
"I had an opportunity to get out, but I loved the military. So you don't leave something you love doing," Wilson said.
He said young men are generally ready for a fight, and the planning and training for war "fit my fancy." As a child, he loved riding calves and playing Tarzan in the woods. From sixth-grade through 10th-grade, he also liked a good fistfight.
"Many of the things I saw and observed overseas, my mother had already taught it to me," Wilson said.
When he visited Brussels, Belgium, he realized that was where Brussels sprouts were from. Phone calls were expensive, but he called his mother to let her know he'd seen them growing in huge fields, to share the experience. "I'd never thought it, and I had to tell her. I said, 'my, my. I'd never made the association that Brussels sprouts were associated with a geographical area.'"
The Army also offered diversity.
While stationed in Germany, Wilson attended an opera with the president of the nation seated two rows ahead of him. He also attended a classical music festival in a castle.
"I never thought I'd see that type of thing, but I did, so the military was everything I wanted it to be," Wilson said.
At Fort Polk, after leaving Vietnam in 1968, Wilson's company was put in charge of a burial detail. He said there were more than 60 companies at Fort Polk, and the duty rotated among them. He was the only black company commander at the time, and he was told to train two burial details — one white and one black to match the race of the soldier being honored.
Wilson said it went against everything he stood for, but he also wanted to keep his career. He called it a crisis point.
"I told him, well, colonel, I just left Vietnam, and we died together, I think we ought to be buried together. I can't do it. I can't provide two details," Wilson said.
That afternoon, the colonel said the general OK'd Wilson to train the details however he chose. Wilson went out and mixed the races of both details. He said the policy was changed.
"There are so many things that you can do within the system that you don't have to go outside of the system," Wilson said.
While stationed at Fort Knox, Kentucky, in the 1970s, he worked with a chapter of the NAACP to register people to vote in the community.
He stayed in the Army for 25 years total, holding a variety of positions in the U.S., Europe and Asia. For 17 years, he trained infantry soldiers. In his last eight years, he worked in logistics. During his tenure, he earned a Master of Arts in government.
In his last years in the Army, Wilson was at Fort Polk. He'd often drive to Monroe and take his mother to church on weekends. He retired in 1989.
In the classroom, back home
After retirement, Wilson moved back to Monroe. His brothers and some sisters had moved away, and Wilson said he wanted to ensure his mother got some of the enjoyments out of life that she might have missed. "Most of all, we talked a lot," Wilson said. Christel died in 2002.
His degree from Southern was in education, so he took a few refresher classes at then-Northeast Louisiana University and started putting the degree to use in public schools.
His first job was at Sallie Humble Elementary. He taught there for a decade. For 11 years, he was at Carroll High School and acted as dean of students, responsible for discipline and attendance until he retired in 2011.
"I still work, I just don't get paid in dollars," Wilson said. He said now he's a humanitarian and does things he always wanted to do, like comparing the Bible to other historic information.
"I try to help people when I can, and I'm an advocate. I have an opinion on everything, and I believe in certain things," Wilson said.
He's been active in the Ouachita Parish NAACP, the Friendly Brothers Kiwanis Club, the Downtown Development Council, Granny Goins Kitchen, the Opportunities Industrialization Center board of directors, the Airport Industrial Advisory Board and Twin City Brotherhood.
He's been a member of Truevine Baptist Church and acted as Sunday school superintendent.
He advises youth not to get distracted from their education.
"Remember, it used to be against the law for a black kid to know how to read, so there must be something mighty valuable about reading," Wilson said. "You can be what you want to be, if you're prepared. If you're not prepared, you cannot be what you want to be. In summary: Get prepared. Learn your math. Learn your English. Learn what's taught."