He was remembered as a leader and a thinker, a man whose wit and courage helped sustain him and hundreds of other U.S. prisoners of war through years of isolation and torture in North Vietnamese prison camps.
James B. Stockdale, the retired vice admiral and Medal of Honor winner, was buried yesterday at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis with all the pageantry befitting one of the modern Navy's most revered figures.
A mourning cannon boomed 15 times, followed by a 21-gun salute before his coffin was lowered into a hillside grave overlooking the waters of the Severn River that he sailed as a midshipman 60 years ago. Under a cloudless sky, a bugler played taps and four Navy F-18s thundered overhead in a tight diamond formation, the final aircraft curling off to symbolize a fallen aviator.
The burial followed a chapel service attended by more than 500 people, including seven Medal of Honor winners, distinguished academy graduates Ross Perot and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and former astronaut and senator John Glenn (D-Ohio), who was a test pilot with Stockdale at Patuxent River Naval Air Station before the war. They sat alongside less-known figures, some still limping from wounds suffered at the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" prison, where Stockdale spent 7 1/2 years after being shot down in 1965.
"His consistent philosophy was, 'Follow me,' and he meant it," retired Adm. William J. Crowe, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a longtime friend of Stockdale's, told the mourners. "And that carried over into his time in the prison camps."
Stockdale, 81, died July 5 at his home in Coronado, Calif. The Navy said he had Alzheimer's disease.
Stockdale is widely remembered as Perot's seemingly bewildered 1992 vice presidential running mate, who opened a televised debate by asking: "Who am I? Why am I here?" Intended as philosophical, the questions apparently missed their mark. "Saturday Night Live" portrayed him as a caricature.
Yesterday, there was no mention of the caricature, only the hero, husband and father.
As his widow, Sybil, looked on from a wheelchair, Stockdale's four sons paid tribute to him, recalling him as a doting father who relished his time with them after being away so long.
Taylor Stockdale, who was 2 1/2 when his father was shot down and didn't see him again until he was 10, drew chuckles from the audience when he recalled asking his father on his return home, to take him camping.
"Can you think of anything worse than a camping trip for a man who just got released from a Vietnamese prison?" Taylor Stockdale, of Albuquerque, said.
His father took him, and for the first time the boy got to know his father away from the publicity surrounding his release. "In so many ways, that trip was a pivotal moment in my life," Taylor Stockdale said.
