Captain Wendell Oliver Pruitt was a pioneering pilot of the 15th Air Force and a Tuskegee Airman from St. Louis. His story begins with humble beginnings and a desire to fly. A Sumner High graduate who grew up in the Ville neighborhood, Pruitt was well liked and well educated. His quiet demeanor gave no clue as to the fierce pilot he would become as he battled America’s enemies during the second World War. The flying ace earned the Distinguished Flying Cross, and decades after his death, a Congressional Gold Medal.