Navy Capt. Jay Coupe Jr.; Joint Chiefs Spokesman

"Nothing in my life made a greater impression on me than the six trips I made to Hanoi to escort our POWs home," he said in a letter to the editor in 2000, after The Post had misidentified him in a historic photo with a gaunt, just-released Lt. Cmdr. John McCain. "The smile on my face in that photograph is an accurate expression of the joy that we all felt that the bravest of our colleagues were returning to the country that honored and loved them. Nothing in the intervening 27 years has changed those feelings."

He later became special assistant and spokesman for Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and handled crises such as the 1988 shooting down of an Iran Air flight in the Persian Gulf and the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut.

While he was serving under Crowe, word came down that all officers would have to pass a physical. Capt. Coupe, whose culinary talents outweighed his physical aptitude, evaded the directive until he was forced to set a time for the exam. Betting that the officer in charge of enforcing the edict would not nag an admiral, Capt. Coupe promised to take the appointment immediately after Crowe. He never heard another word about it.

He retired in 1988. Among his military awards were the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the Defense Superior Service Medal and the Bronze Star. He started an international public policy consulting firm and married, for the first and only time, in 1989 in Italy. His wife, of McLean, is his sole survivor.

Capt. Coupe returned to public service in 1998, when he was chief of staff of the State Department's commission investigating the embassy bombings in East Africa that summer. The probe concluded that U.S. embassies worldwide were vulnerable to terrorism. In 2001, he became a special adviser to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Those tasks didn't seriously interfere with his off-duty fun. As a member of the Washington corps of L'Accademia Italiana della Cucina , Capt. Coupe enjoyed opulent culinary repasts with fellow gastronomes and hosted countless dinners.

He was also a past president of the Cogswell Society, a drinking club named in honor of Henry D. Cogswell, a sober-minded campaigner against distilled spirits. Cogswell, who built ornate water fountains throughout the United States intended to encourage people to drink water, designed the distinctive crane-topped memorial at Seventh Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, which for years stood in silent reproach of a nearby liquor store. The fountain is no longer operating.

The irony was not lost on Capt. Coupe. He wrote a letter to the editor describing the fountain's history several years ago, and friends could almost hear his chortle when he wrote that the club "would hope that all Washingtonians would appreciate this unique monument to sobriety."