One was the son of a Mississippi sharecropper, the other a privileged New England prep school graduate. One died young, a casualty of wartime. The other lived a long life celebrated for its service to country and to championing racial equality.

Navy Ensign Jesse L. Brown and Lieutenant Thomas J. Hudner Jr., who died Monday at age 93, will forever be linked in history by who they were and what they did. On Dec. 4, 1950, the two pilots were near North Korea’s Chosin Reservoir when Brown’s plane was shot down, crash-landing on a snow-packed mountainside. Spotting Brown waving from the cockpit, Mr. Hudner ditched his own plane near Brown’s and attempted to free his friend from the smoking wreckage. He could not and was evacuated by helicopter as darkness descended.