Louis Purnell

Louis Rayfield Purnell Sr. (April 5, 1920 – August 10, 2001) was a noted curator at the United States' National Air and Space Museum and earlier in life, a decorated Tuskegee Airman. At the museum, he became expert in space flight artifacts, particularly spacesuits, and was instrumental in curating artifacts related to space exploration, during the pivotal years of the 1960s and into the 1980s. Purnell was the first African American to become a curator at the Smithsonian Institution.

Earlier, as a captain in the Army Air Corps and a fighter pilot, he served in the European and North African theater during World War II. For his service during the war, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with six Oak Leaf Clusters.

Early life Purnell was born in Snow Hill, Maryland on April 5, 1920. His father painted Pullman railroad cars and his mother was a teacher. He was raised in Wilmington, Delaware and later Cape May, New Jersey. He attended and graduated with honors from Cape May High School, which was integrated, though Black students accounted for little more than one percent of the school's enrollment.

From an early age, Purnell was interested in aircraft and flight. He would ride his bike to the nearby airfield to watch and study the planes in flight. When his African-American family moved to a mostly white neighborhood, his father advised him that, "in order to appear equal to, you have to be twice as good." |group=N In the early 1940s, Tuskegee Institute had the only program in the United States that trained blacks in advanced flying techniques. Purnell applied and was accepted. For his service, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with six Oak Leaf Clusters.

After the war After his service in the war, Purnell attended Howard University and obtained a degree in psychology. Purnell was noted for his work on the Spacecraft and Spacesuits exhibit and expanded and cared for the museums collections until his retirement in 1985. Upon his retirement he donated his flying wings and other items from the war to the museum. He afterward remained a consultant for the museum and traveled as a lecturer. Early in the year he died, the foreword he wrote for the book Black Knights: The Story of the Tuskegee Airmen was published.

Personal At the time of his death from cancer in 2001, he had been married to his second wife, JoAnn, for over thirty years. He had one son and a daughter from a prior marriage and one stepdaughter.