Tom Hudner’s father ran a chain of grocery stores in Massachusetts. Jesse Brown was the son of a Mississippi sharecropper.

But war has a way of making everybody equal, rich and poor, black and white, and as winter froze the Chosin Reservoir in late 1950, Hudner and Brown were US Navy pilots, flying their Corsair fighter planes to support some Marines who were pinned down.

Hudner was flying as wingman for Brown, so he had a good view as North Korean anti-aircraft fire tore into Brown’s plane. Brown managed to make a belly landing on the snow and ice below. Moments later, Hudner did the same, in an audacious effort to rescue Brown.

Ditching his plane was beyond heroic, but when Hudner got to Brown’s plane, he found him barely alive. Brown was pinned in the cockpit, his mangled legs trapped in the twisted fuselage. Hudner packed snow against the burning plane so it wouldn’t go up and engulf Brown. But he couldn’t pull him out.

A Marine helicopter pilot named Charlie Ward made a remarkable landing nearby, but the ax he brought with him did little to free Brown from the wrecked plane.

Night was falling and Ward’s helicopter couldn’t navigate in the dark. Hudner and Ward had to make a decision. They left Brown, hoping to return, but it wasn’t meant to be.

When President Truman put the Medal of Honor around his neck, recognizing his selfless rescue attempt with the nation’s highest honor, all Tom Hudner could think of was Jesse Brown.

For more than a half-century, Tom Hudner did everything he could to honor the memory of his friend who died on a godforsaken frozen patch of Korea. He put Brown’s widow through college. He went back to North Korea to search for Brown’s remains. And he smiled broadly when the Navy named a frigate the USS Jesse L. Brown in 1973.

But 22 years ago, the Navy decommissioned the ship and sold it to the Egyptians, who promptly renamed it the Damiyat.

In 2012, the Navy announced it was building a destroyer, the USS Thomas J. Hudner, in Bath, Maine. It’s partially finished and should be launched in Boston in a couple of years.

Tom Hudner is 91 years old now, living in Concord. Parkinson’s has made it virtually impossible for him to talk or swallow. But he can write, and so he recently wrote to Ray Mabus, the secretary of the Navy, asking him to name a new destroyer for Ensign Jesse L. Brown.

In his letter, Hudner reminded Mabus that Brown was the first African-American carrier pilot, the first black officer to give his life for the US Navy, the personification and validation of President Truman’s decision to integrate the military, the inspiration for countless African-Americans to join the military.

“As our nation once again struggles with racial division, we could send a strong message by remembering Jesse in this manner,’’ Hudner wrote. “It would show that in our Navy, men and women of all colors are accepted as equals. It would ensure that Jesse’s legacy lives on, long after we, his friends, have left this earth.’’

Adam Makos, Hudner’s biographer, spent seven years with him, researching the book that would become “Devotion,’’ about the remarkable story of Tom Hudner and Jesse Brown. Makos said persuading the Navy to name a ship after Brown is Hudner’s last battle.

“What kind of man would intentionally crash his plane to save a friend?’’ Makos asked. “What kind of man was Jesse Brown that Tom would do that? These are two men future generations should know and honor. There is a way to ensure that.’’

Tom Hudner, American hero, has one last dream. To see the USS Thomas J. Hudner and the USS Jesse L. Brown sailing side by side, just as he and Brown sailed into battle together 66 years ago.

“It would be a statement to the world,’’ said Tom Hudner, a wingman to the end, “of just how far we’ve come.’’

Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cullen@globe.com