![]() ![]() “The valor that he and his fellow POWs displayed was deeply inspiring to our nation at the time, and it continues to inspire our brave men and women who serve today,” Obama said.ĭenton was most famous for spending seven years and seven months as a Vietnam War POW after his plane was shot down during a bombing mission from the aircraft carrier USS Independence in 1965. President Barack Obama said in a statement that Denton “leaves behind a legacy of heroic service to his country.” President Ronald Reagan lauded him that year as “a national treasure.” ![]() “Incarceration relieved me of that burden - he couldn’t affect my future there.The retired Navy rear admiral was elected in 1980 as Alabama’s first Republican senator in 112 years and earned a reputation as one of the Senate’s most conservative members before being defeated in his 1986 re-election bid. “Until the day I went down, I lived under my father’s shadow,” McCain told TIME in 1978. ![]() And McCain, as much as anyone, knew that such a feeling was rare - and something that should not go to waste. And, though he was self-deprecatingly aware of the irony of becoming well-known as a military man for what he did as a prisoner of war, his story struck a chord with Americans of all political leanings. Read more: TIME’s special edition about the life of John McCain is available now.Īll told, he had spent five and a half years as a prisoner, with a substantial amount of that time in solitary confinement. When his cellmate’s broken arm went untreated, McCain fashioned a cast out of his own bandages. When his famous name afforded him a chance to jump the line to go home early, he refused prisoners were supposed to be released in the order in which they had been taken, and he knew he wasn’t next in line. Asked to list the names of the men in his squadron, McCain instead listed the offensive line of the Green Bay Packers. But, along with those reports came word that American prisoners had proved tough to break. ![]()
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