Former Spring Lake mayor, police chief, member of Army's Triple Nickles remembered

Billy Manning passed away on Monday. While most knew him at one point as the Spring Lake police chief and mayor, it's what he did in the Army that certainly stands out.

I knew Billy Manning for about 40 years. He was Spring Lake's police chief when I was stationed at Fort Bragg in the 1970s. I sat down with him a couple of weeks before his passing. It was the 75th anniversary of D-Day. I talked with him about his time in the Army's 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion. The all-black unit was organized in 1943 and served during World War II.

Former Spring Lake mayor, police chief dead at 89

Manning joined the Triple Nickles in 1947 and said he was proud of his service.

"Everything we did ... and still doing ... we done a good job," Manning said. "They did a good job. We've got more opportunities than we had before. Some take advantage of it, some don't."

Although the unit never deployed to Europe, they were sent to the West Coast as Smoke Jumpers. Their mission was called "Operation Firefly." They jumped into the forest to put out fires that were started by balloon bombs sent across the ocean by the Japanese Army.

"What is that, a 46 or a 47?" I asked during the interview two weeks ago.

"That's a 46," Manning said.

"You jumped out of that plane?"

"Yeah," Manning said.

"Was it a good jump?"

"All of them were good jumps. I'm still here," Manning said.

Manning never lost his since of humor.

While he was proud of his military service, his family was really proud of what he did in the community. His daughter says she'll remember her dad as a true pioneer in the airborne community.

"Overcoming the discrimination and still having the will to serve a country that, on its face, didn't care for him based on his color. But still risking his life with his brothers as a Triple Nickles," Tijuana Hannibal-Daughte said.

"He was one of the first people that I met because he stopped me and gave me a ticket," said Wilbur Bell, Manning's son-in-law.

Manning severed as the Spring Lake police chief in the 1970s and was elected mayor in 1993. The family said they hope he's remembered as a man of strong character and integrity.

"Because even at his point of death, he never lost his sense of mind," Bell said. "He was always strong."

"And I even put in my Facebook post as we would see when we would lose a member, that Trooper took his last jump," Hannibal-Daughte said.