Vice Admiral James Stockdale USN (Ret.) died today at his home in Coronado, CA. Admiral Stockdale was 81. The Navy did not specify the cause of death but it is thought to be from complications of Alzheimer's Disease. He is survived by his wife and co-author Sybil, their four sons and eight grandchildren.
Admiral Stockdale, a Navy fighter pilot, was best known for having spent 7 1/2 years as the senior naval prisoner of war in Hanoi and for running as the Vice-Presidential candidate with Ross Perot in 1992. There was much more.
Born in Abingdon, Illinois, he attended the United States Naval Acedemy, graduating in 1946. After graduating from flight school at Pensacola he reported to the fleet as a fighter pilot. In 1954, Stockdale attended the Test Pilot School at Patuxent River, Maryland. One classmate was John Glenn.
On August 4, 1964, as squadron commander, Stockdale was in the air over the sea in what became known as the Tonkin Gulf Incident, one of the more public justifications for going to war in Viet Nam. Years later he said:
"[I] had the best seat in the house to watch that event, and our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets -- there were no PT boats there.... There was nothing there but black water and American fire power."
On a mission over North Viet Nam, in his third combat tour, his A-4E Skyhawk was hit by ground fire. Stockdale ejected, landing in a village. He was severely beaten and turned over to the North Vietnamese authorities and taken to Hoa Lo prison, Hanoi. Here began a brutal and heroic odyssey.
From his capture in 1965 to his release in 1973, Stockdale spent four years in solitary confinement, two in leg irons. According to the Navy, at least 15 times he was locked in leg irons in a bath stall and routinely tortured and beaten.
When told by his captors that he was to be paraded in public, Stockdale slit his scalp with a razor to purposely disfigure himself so that his captors could not use him as propaganda. When he heard that other prisoners were dying under the torture, he slit his wrists and told them that he preferred death to submission.
In an interview with PBS' Jim Lehrer, Stockdale recalled his disastrous convention speech in light of these experiences.
It was terribly frustrating because I remember I started with, "Who am I? Why am I here?" and I never got back to that because there was never an opportunity for me to explain my life to people. It was so different from Quayle and Gore. The four years in solitary confinement in Vietnam, 7½ years in prisons, drop the first bomb that started the ... American bombing raid in the North Vietnam. We blew the oil storage tanks of then off the map. And I never - I couldn't approach -- I don't say it just to brag, but, I mean, my sensitivities are completely different.
Vice Admiral Stockdale holds 26 combat decorations, including two Purple Hearts, two Distinguished Flying Crosses, three Distinguished Service Medals, four Silver Star Medals, and the Medal of Honor. He is the only three- or four-star officer in the history of the U.S. Navy to wear both aviator wings and the Medal of Honor.
In 37 years on active service he spent eight on shore duty.
Upon his retirement from the Navy in 1979, the Secretary of the Navy established the Vice Admiral James Stockdale Award for Inspirational Leadership which is presented annually to two commanding officers, one in the Atlantic Fleet and one in the Pacific. In 1989, Monmouth College in his native State of Illinois, from which he entered the Naval Academy, named its student union "Stockdale Center." The following year he was made a 1990 Laureate of the Abraham Lincoln Academy of Illinois in ceremonies at the University of Chicago. He is an Honorary Fellow in the Society of Experimental Test Pilots. In 1993 he was inducted into the Carrier Aviation Hall of Fame, and in 1995 was enshrined in the U.S. Naval Aviation Hall of Honor at the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola, Florida.
Admiral Stockdale wrote numerous books, including A Vietnam Experience: Ten Years of Reflection (Hoover Institution Press), which won the 1985 Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge Honor Prize for Books, and In Love and War (1984, Harper and Row), coauthored with his wife Sybil and now in its second revised and updated edition (1990, U.S. Naval Institute Press). In early 1987, a dramatic presentation of In Love and War as an NBC television movie was viewed by more than 45 million Americans.
Mrs. Stockdale lobbied Congress through the war years, for US military recognition of imprisonment conditions of prisoners of war, and the hardships suffered by their families at home.
Really amazing to read of such an amazing history, Vice Admiral Stockdale is indeed a hero among men and certainlay belongs in our prayers. I appreciate the post!
Posted by: ben | 07/06/2005 at 03:14 PM