John Mosley was the first Black football player on the Colorado A&M (now Colorado State) football team, an undefeated wrestler, civil rights activist, Tuskegee Airman, and now the namesake for a health care clinic that will help fellow veterans for generations to come.
Last summer, U.S. Rep. Jason Crow sponsored a bill to name a new community outpatient clinic at the Department of Veterans Affairs Hospital in Aurora after the 1943 graduate, who died in 2015 at the age of 93. President Joe Biden signed the bill into law in November 2021.
The Lt. Col. John W. Mosley VA Clinic will open in Summer 2022. It honors a pilot who flew numerous missions in World War II and the Korean War before beginning a career of community service in Aurora. Mosley’s wife, Edna, was the first Black woman to serve on Aurora’s city council.
“[John] was the son of a [former] slave that did something fantastic with his life, and did all those things with a bigger picture, a bigger perspective outside of just achieving things for himself, and instead wanting to create a pathway for others,” Mosley’s grandson J.C. Futrell said.
CSU presented both Edna and John Mosley honorary doctorates in 2004, and their names grace the Edna and John W. Mosley P-8 School in Aurora. John Mosely received the Founders Day Medal from CSU posthumously in 2017.
A lifelong Rams fan, Mosley was elected to the CSU Sports Hall of Fame in 1998 and the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame in 2009. The John W. Mosley Student-Athlete Mentoring Program was established at CSU in 2011, and two of his grandsons graduated from the University.
“If you’re associated with CSU, then you know there was an exceptional individual who did some extraordinary things who was proud to be from Colorado,” Futrell said. “I think my grandfather stands as a real testament to what it means to support your community and love your great state.”