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Rdtf
CNO
Joined: 13 May 2004
Posts: 2209
Location: BUSHville
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 Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 11:27 pm Post subject: Vice Adm. James Stockdale Dead at 81 |
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A great American.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,161649,00.html
| Quote: | Vice Adm. James Stockdale, Former Perot Running Mate, Dead at 81
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
SAN DIEGO — Retired Vice Adm. James Stockdale, Ross Perot's 1992 presidential running mate who received the Medal of Honor after enduring 71/2 years in a North Vietnamese prison, died Tuesday. He was 81.
The Navy did not provide a cause of death but said he had suffered from Alzheimer's disease. He died at his home in Coronado.
During the Vietnam War (search), Stockdale was a Navy fighter pilot based on the USS Oriskany and flew 201 missions before he was shot down on Sept. 9, 1965. He became the highest-ranking naval officer captured during the war, the Navy said.
Stockdale was taken to Hoa Lo Prison, known as the "Hanoi Hilton." His shoulders were wrenched from their sockets, his leg had been shattered by angry villagers and a torturer, and his back was broken. But he refused to capitulate.
Rather than allow himself to be used in a propaganda film, Stockdale smashed his face into a pulp with a mahogany stool.
"My only hope was to disfigure myself," Stockdale wrote in his 1984 autobiography "In Love and War." The ploy worked, but he spent the next two years in leg irons.
After Ho Chi Minh's death, he broke a glass pane in an interrogation room and slashed his wrists until he passed out in his own blood. After that, captors relented in their harsh treatment of him and his fellow prisoners.
Stockdale spent four years in solitary confinement before his release in 1973.
He received 26 combat decorations, including the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest medal for valor, in 1976. The citation reads, "By his heroic action at great peril to himself, he earned the everlasting gratitude of his fellow prisoners and of his country."
He retired from the military in 1979, one of the most highly decorated officers in U.S. Navy history, and became president of the Citadel (search), a military college in South Carolina. He left in 1981 to become a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution (search) at Stanford.
In the 1992 presidential election, Stockdale became independent candidate Perot's vice presidential running mate, initially as a stand-in on the ticket but later as the candidate.
Stockdale gave a stumbling performance in the nationally televised vice-presidential debate against Dan Quayle and Al Gore (search) and later said he didn't feel comfortable in the public eye.
"Who am I? Why am I here?" he asked rhetorically in his opening statement. Toward the end, he asked the moderator to repeat a question, saying, "I didn't have my hearing aid turned on."
Stockdale came to know Perot through Sybil Stockdale's work establishing an organization on behalf of families of prisoners held during the Vietnam War.
When Perot ran again in 1996 as the candidate of his Reform Party, Stockdale had rejoined the Republican Party.
He is survived by his wife and four sons.
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| Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2005 11:43 am Post subject: |
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"I guess I'd like to be thought of as a guy who tried to help his country," Stockdale says after several moments.
"Maybe as someone who never shirked battle, who realized it was an honor to be an American and tried to live up to the responsibilities of that honor at any personal cost."
--Admiral James Stockdale
WE LOST ONE OF THE GREATS.
SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE ADMIRAL |
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GenrXr
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy
Joined: 05 Aug 2004
Posts: 1720
Location: Houston
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| Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2005 4:04 am Post subject: |
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I remember watching the vice presidential debates and feeling sorry for the Admiral. At the time I knew nothing of Admiral Stockdale other then he was a military hero and highly regarded by Perot. Years later I read his MOH citation and was humbled to the point of realizing my initial reaction to the debate was not only arrogant on my part, but dangerously ignorant showing fully what Thomas Jefferson was speaking of when discussing the dangers of the ignorant majority electing politicians. I was definitely one of the ignorant and for sure in the majority. It is sad commentary that the one person of four who was on stage for those debates was undoubtedly the most deserving and likely capable to serve as CIC, while also being the most ridiculed.
Recently I have been reading the Gulag Archipelago by Alexandr I. Solzhenitsyn and have an even greater respect for what the Admiral sacrificed for us. Alex explains torture at great length basically giving a scientific analysis of the methods for gaining confessions. He shows us the reader how millions gave confession, yet only a few were able to deny the interrogator. How many took this approach no one will ever know because of poor records kept, yet there is no doubt to the rarity of people who had such constitutions of character and principle. In comparison to the US where in Vietnam there were several people within a small group of POW’s who were able to deny their interrogators. It could be argued that our countries founding being based upon Judeo-Christian principles and our freedom granted by God and defended by the men in uniform gives them an even greater inner strength to carry them than most had in the Soviet Socialist Republic. People of supposed great intellect would argue this being anecdotal evidence though.
To me though there is no doubt, Admiral Stockdale was a man of character with principles of steel forged by God’s hammer and anvil. A man who understood what his actions meant to those before and after him, with a resolve only a few people in this world can fully understand, yet all can appreciate and be humbled by. He set the bar impossibly high for most, although the very act of trying to reach the bar will forever affect all who try.
If you are wondering whether this type of strength can be quantified let me just say we will never be able to measure scientifically this inner greatness. It doesn’t matter whether you are a man or a woman. The military definitely helped Admiral Stockdale, yet this strength can be exhibited by people of any type. The only common thread to occur within people of this type of inner strength is a belief in something greater then themselves. These people tend to exhibit a self-less nature of character and belief in God. A great man indeed Admiral Stockdale and by his example many people will have a bar to reach for.
Let me finish with this excerpt from Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, Volume I, p. 131
Solzhenitsyn is writing about people who get by without even suffering torture due to their strong principles. Torturing is after all hard work, so why bother if you run into a bull. The Soviets you see were able through great practice to discern from time to time the Stockdale type.
N. Stolyarova recalls an old woman who was her neighbor on the Butyrki bunks in 1937. They kept on interrogating her every night. Two years earlier, a former Metropolitan of the Orthodox Church, who had escaped from exile, had spent a night at her home on his way through Moscow. “But he wasn’t the former Metropolitan, he was the Metropolitan! Truly I was worthy of receiving him.” “All right then. To whom did he go when he left Moscow?” “I know, but I won’t tell you!” (The Metropolitan had escaped to Finland via an underground railroad of believers.) At first the interrogators took turns, and then they went after her in groups. They shook their fists in the little old woman’s face, and she replied: “There is nothing you can do with me even if you cut me into pieces. After all, you are afraid of your bosses, and you are afraid of each other, and you are even afraid of killing me.” (They would lose contact with the underground railroad.) “But I am not afraid of anything. I would be glad to be judged by God right this minute.”
Rest in Peace
Admiral
_________________
"An activist is the person who cleans up the water, not the one claiming its dirty."
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to stand by and do nothing." Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Founder of Conservative Philosophy |
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dusty
Admiral
Joined: 27 Aug 2004
Posts: 1264
Location: East Texas
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| Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2005 1:21 pm Post subject: |
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James Stockdale. A true American hero I wish I'd have had the honor to meet.
Calm seas Admiral, calm seas.
Dusty |
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