COVER STORY A LOOK BACK
Vance H. Marchbanks Jr. Tuskegee Airman, Flight Surgeon, Space Medical Pioneer D irectly across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C.’s Reagan National Airport is the Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling which is a 900- acre military installation. On the base, two streets are named after members of Kappa Alpha Psi. One street, Chappie James Blvd., is named in honor of the late legendary He flew B-29 combat missions and was stationed in Japan and Italy.
four-star Air Force general and the 29 th Laurel Wreath awardee, General Daniel “Chap- pie” James Jr. who was a 1969 initiate of the Nashville (TN) Alumni Chapter. The other is a small quiet little street, Marchbanks Lane, less than half a mile from Chappie James Blvd. and is named in honor of a brother who led an extraordinary life characterized as “trail blazing”. This residential street located on a military base near the nation’s capital is named after Col. Vance H. Marchbanks Jr., M.D. He was a Tuskegee Airman, the first African American surgeon in the United States Air Force and the first African American to earn the rank of colonel in the Air Force Medical Service. His ground-breaking studies on flight and the human body made him a space medical pioneer well before Star Trek’s Dr. Leonard H. McCoy. Vance H. Marchbanks Jr., M.D. was a 1929 initiate of the Upsilon of Kappa Alpha Psi ® at the University of Califor- nia, Los Angeles.
The son of an Army cavalry captain and Buf-
Publishing achievement for more than 100 years
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