NAVAL BASE VENTURA COUNTY, Calif. — As dozens of former POWs snapped to attention, the Navy today dedicated a warship to Vice Adm. James Stockdale, a fellow captive many credited with giving them the courage to survive.
Stockdale, a soft-spoken scholar best known for his short-lived foray into presidential politics, died at 81 in 2005. He was H. Ross Perot’s running mate in 1992 — but Perot, who spoke at the commissioning, did not mention the campaign. Instead, he focused on Stockdale’s ability to inspire prisoners in the infamous North Vietnamese prison camp known as the Hanoi Hilton.
In a ceremony laden with Navy traditions, dignitaries on the bunting-draped Stockdale spoke to a crowd of several thousand gathered on a cement dock at Naval Base Ventura County. It was the official debut of the USS Stockdale, a 509-foot guided missile destroyer that will be based in San Diego.
In his familiar twang, Perot spoke of Stockdale defying his captors and organizing a worship service at the Hoa Lo prison camp, where he was held in solitary confinement for four of his 7 1/2 years. When furious guards broke up the service, Stockdale was among the men who risked their lives by singing “The Star Spangled Banner.”
With that tale of Stockdale’s storied resistance to crushing pressures from prison officials, Perot urged the crowd to give their all as a Navy band launched into the national anthem.
“I hope you just sing your hearts out today,” he said.
Stockdale became a national figure when he reluctantly accepted the number-two spot on Perot’s Reform Party ticket in 1992. At the vice presidential debate, he appeared unprepared and confused, an impression that was only deepened when he asked: “Who am I? Why am I here?”
He later explained that he meant the rhetorical questions to define him as a philosopher, but they instantly became a national punch line indicating a kind of genial cluelessness.
By all accounts, he was brilliant. An Annapolis graduate who studied philosophy at Stanford University, he was an avid follower of the Stoics, ancient Greeks who taught that free will enables people to rise over the most adverse circumstances. It was a philosophy that proved invaluable in prison, where his shoulders were wrenched from their sockets, his knee was broken twice, he was forced to wear leg irons for two years, and he was tortured at least 15 times.
Charlie Plumb, an ex-POW who helped organize the ceremony, said Stockdale encouraged others with ideas from the philosopher Epictetus, secretly disseminating them on sheets of toilet paper in an ink he made from brick dust. He said the effort helped men overcome their shame for buckling under torture.
The most senior Naval officer at a camp whose prisoners included John McCain, Stockdale confided that he too hadn’t been as strong as he wanted to be, according to Plumb. “But he said, ‘Here’s the deal,’ ” recalled Plumb, now a motivational speaker. ” ‘You back off, regroup, get a second line of defense and go back into the torture room with a renewed commitment to be stronger the second time around.’ “
Stockdale also organized a clandestine communication system, linking prisoners with each other through coded coughs, sneezes, taps on cell walls, the whisking of straw brooms, any sound likely to go unnoticed by the guards.
Especially for prisoners who had spent months in isolation, it was more than a way to convey data. “It was a form of validation,” Plumb said. “You knew someone was out there who knew you were alive.”
At today’s commissioning, the Stockdale’s commanding officer addressed himself to the vice admiral’s family.
“Thank you for sharing your husband, your father, your grandfather with our ship and our nation,” said Cmdr. Fred W. Kacher. “We are better off for it.”
In a wheelchair, Stockdale’s widow, Sybil Stockdale, a crusader for POWs at a time when the government preferred silence on the issue, was helped to the podium by her granddaughter Elizabeth, a teacher in Virginia. It was Elizabeth who issued the traditional order — one that got sailors sprinting through the crowd and onto the decks as guns fired, engines churned, sirens blared, radar dishes whirled, and four jets roared overhead.
“Man this ship,” she cried, “and bring her to life!”
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