Philip Serafini, the son of Italian immigrants who trained more than 200 U.S. Navy pilots during World War II, and went on to teach social studies and science in Denver Public Schools before acting as principal and assistant principal, has died. Serafini was 97 when he died on April 10.

He was born in 1920 in Denver, the youngest of 10 children of Philip Serafini and Ann Melicchia Serafini, immigrants from the Abruzzo region of Italy, who came to Denver in 1900. Serafini’s father trained as a tailor in Italy, and had a business in downtown Denver, said Lynn Seaman, one of Serafini’s daughters. The elder Serafini exhibited a man’s coat at the Philadelphia World’s Fair in 1926.