William "Buster" Byrd was a coal miner who saw beyond the hinterlands of rural Westmoreland County. He never finished middle school, but he sent all five of his children to college.

A World War II veteran, he drove supply trucks through the heart of enemy lines and, when he came home, he let off steam by playing baseball, once vying for a place with the Pittsburgh Negro Leagues.

He was retired and near age 70 when he got involved in politics, helping to form the Mon Valley Political Action Committee and working with the Duquesne Black Political Assembly.

Mr. Byrd died Tuesday from complications of pulmonary disease at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Aspinwall. He was 87.

Mr. Byrd was the son of a coal miner. An only child, he was 7 when his parents, Arleatha Shepherd and Robert Tobias, left Blackstock, S.C., and moved to the Fitz Henry section of South Huntingdon in 1924. After his father had died, Mr. Byrd changed his last name when he entered the military, taking the name of Abraham Byrd, his mother's partner.

Mr. Byrd quit school at 14 to work as a driver for the mines. By 17, he was working full time at the Pittsburgh Coal Co. and expecting his first child.

At 22, he enlisted in the Army and became a member of the famed Red Ball Express, a mostly black unit of soldiers who risked their lives delivering gas, bullets and food through the darkest, most dangerous part of Europe.

Many blacks joined the unit, hoping to escape being confined to serving as mess stewards.

After his tour of duty, Mr. Byrd relocated to Mount Vernon, N.Y. While there, he worked for a segregated women's club, where he arranged for one daughter to get piano lessons. For a short time, he drove for Dutch Schultz, the charismatic but violent gangster from the Bronx.

In the 1960s, Mr. Byrd, a tall, debonair ladies' man, returned to Pittsburgh, to be closer to his mother.

He spent three weeks working for a steel mill, but was too vain to stand the job. A robust ballplayer who often had women arguing in the stands for his attention, he hated coming home covered with tar.

Divorced from his first wife, Pauline, he started another family. His new bride, Frances Sant, was 28 years his junior. They stayed married for more than a decade.

Mr. Byrd settled in Clairton and went to work for Sears and Roebuck. He belonged to an all-black hunting club in Jefferson County and took care of his youngest daughter, Roberta, when she came to live with him at 15.

His life was simple. He dressed in his dickies, he played cards and he cared for an aunt. He retired in 1979 and decided to take a stand by getting active in politics.

He became a founding member of the Mon Valley Political Action Committee, worked on the campaign to elect Allegheny County Judge Cynthia Baldwin and supported Jesse Jackson's first run for president in 1984.

He is survived by his five children, four of whom finished college. They work as educators, social workers and entrepreneurs. They are Bythema Bagley, of New Paltz, N.Y.; Rosetta Benson and William A.T. Byrd, of Allentown; Rosemarie Byrd-LaRue, of Houston; and Roberta Byrd, of Hazelwood.

The funeral was yesterday at Hazelwood Christian Church, Hazelwood. Arrangements were handled by Mark V. Sauvageot Funeral Home.