Later Life
Sport moved to Massachusetts, where he worked in the state courts as an affirmative action officer, helping to ensure equal access for African-Americans. He also served on the boards of such notable organizations as the NAACP, the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society. His son-in-law would later recount, "I think the experience of being with the Tuskegee Airmen prepared him to be a leader."
Sport retired and moved to Conyers, Georgia in 1988, but that didn't stop him from helping others. He worked with an Atlanta-area charity, the Angels of Mercy, which provided food and support to homeless persons, for many years. In 2007, Sport, along with the other Tuskegee Airmen, would receive the Congressional Gold Medal for their service.
Vernon Sport died in Conyers, Georgia on September 8, 2008, of complications from Alzheimer's Disease. He was survived by his wife, three sisters and four children.
Read more about this topic: Vernon Sport
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Helpless, unknown, and unremembered, most human beings, however sensitive, idealistic, intelligent, go through life as passengers rather than chauffeurs. Although we may pretend that it is the chauffeur who is the social inferior ... most of us, like Toad of Toad Hall, would not mind a turn at the wheel ourselves.”
—Ralph Harper (b. 1915)
“There was a time when the average reader read a novel simply for the moral he could get out of it, and however naïve that may have been, it was a good deal less naïve than some of the limited objectives he has now. Today novels are considered to be entirely concerned with the social or economic or psychological forces that they will by necessity exhibit, or with those details of daily life that are for the good novelist only means to some deeper end.”
—Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964)