Captured

by Alvin Townley

  Time came for Jerry to call home. An operator patched him through to Watergate Lane in Virginia Beach. He heard Jane’s voice. It still dripped with Southern warmth and abiding love. It seemed as if no time had passed. They were as in love as ever. Jerry and Jane were lucky; many POWs received unsettling or tragic news on that first phone call home. Eight years brings many changes to families and relationships.

  Grateful for his good fortune and exhausted from an emotional day, Jerry slipped between the crisp sheets of a soft hospital bed. He laid his head on a fresh down pillow and fell fast asleep. His dreams were those of a free man.

  The US military’s physicians weren’t ready to declare him entirely free, however. Jerry’s doctor explained that POWs needed further psychological evaluation before being released. The medical teams worried that after so long in captivity, POWs might be flat-out crazy. Jerry revolted. The only thing that would make him crazy was staying one more day in the hospital. The doctors relented. Jerry put himself on the first flight home. His old cellmate Jim Mulligan joined him for a nearly nine-thousand-mile journey home.

  They were returning to a much-changed country, one needing closure after a decadelong war with few real victories. The United States had lost 58,000 sons and daughters in Vietnam; hundreds of thousands more suffered wounds both physical and emotional. Many returning troops never received thanks, appreciation, or even a simple “welcome home.” An increasingly ugly and unpopular war had divided and disillusioned the public while fueling social upheaval. The citizenry had grown weary of stalemate and loss, of disheartening news from abroad. The return of POWs held in both North and South Vietnam gave the conflict a sorely needed final chapter. It gave the nation a common cause to celebrate. It allowed the country to unite and claim a victory at last. From coast to coast, jubilant Americans turned out to welcome home more than five hundred returning prisoners of war.

  In the predawn hours of Thursday, February 15, 1973, Jerry Denton watched the twinkling lights of Norfolk and Virginia Beach shimmer below him. He saw swaths covered by the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. He tried to see the lights of Watergate Lane, where he’d bid Jane goodbye in May of 1965. He heard the airliner’s engines change pitch, and the plane gently nosed toward Chambers Field at Naval Station Norfolk. The wheels touched down with a bump and the airliner taxied toward a wall of floodlights. The bright lights met Jerry and Jim Mulligan when they stepped out of the plane. Cheers washed over them. At Clark Air Base, they’d heard cheers from caring strangers. Now, they listened to the outpouring from dear family, friends, and colleagues who’d spent long years worrying and praying on their behalf. In a way, they had all brought Jerry Denton home.

  Jerry walked down the stairs onto the tarmac, his head held high. He listened to the band. He absorbed the happy faces, the colorful banners, the American flags. He saw Jane and his family in the crowd. He wanted to rush straight to them, but he stepped to a microphone to perform his final duty. He thanked everyone for their love and for never forgetting the POWs. His words said, his mission ended at last. He stepped toward his family.

  The eight of them met him with joyous hugs. He embraced Jane first. Then the children piled around him, each trying to wrap him in their arms, each trying to get close to their father. At times, each of them had doubted he’d ever return. Now, they could hold him, hear his laugh, and see his tears. His eldest son, Jerry III, was eighteen in 1965; his daughter Mary was age one. Now they were twenty-six and nine. To Jerry, Jane had never looked more beautiful.

  Together, the family walked to the caravan that would take them to Portsmouth Naval Hospital, where they could visit away from the lights and media. There, Jerry would share a special, unique memory of each child that he’d treasured in Hanoi. Those memories, Jerry told his children, had seen him through his most difficult times. For a moment before the caravan left Naval Station Norfolk, Jerry and Jane had a car to themselves. Alone in the back seat, they held each other in an embrace for which both had waited nearly eight years.

  Jerry Denton had kept his promise to Jane, his family, his men, and himself. He had returned with honor.

  WHEN I FIRST MET JERRY DENTON at his Virginia home, I introduced myself and said, “Hello, Senator.” He smiled and answered, “Alvin, I was a senator. I will always be an admiral.”

  To Jerry Denton, no other duty outranked his command in the prison camps of North Vietnam. Even the six years he served his home state of Alabama in the United States Senate did not compare. Never had he served with such devoted, duty-bound men as the members of the Fourth Allied POW Wing, and especially the brothers who carried one another through their ordeal in Alcatraz.

  Jerry received his promotion to captain upon his release and his promotion to rear admiral shortly thereafter. He also received the Navy Cross for his leadership and heroism in Hanoi. He returned to duty not long after his homecoming. He continued serving in the navy until retiring in 1977. He mounted a successful US Senate campaign in 1980 and entered the Senate when Ronald Reagan entered the White House: January 1981. He remains the only navy admiral to serve in that body. The next year, 1982, President Reagan honored him in the annual State of the Union address. “We don’t have to turn to our history books for heroes,” said the fortieth president to his national audience. “They’re all around us. One who sits among you here tonight epitomized that heroism at the end of the longest imprisonment ever inflicted on men of our armed forces. Who can ever forget that night when we waited for television to bring us the scene of that first plane landing at Clark Field in the Philippines—bringing our POWs home. The plane door opened and Jeremiah Denton came slowly down the ramp. He caught sight of our flag, saluted, and said, ‘God bless America,’ then thanked us for bringing him home.”

  Jerry served one term in the Senate and narrowly lost reelection. Perhaps that was for the best. He brought to Washington an idealism that often clashed with the tactical and ever-political machinations of Capitol Hill. In 1987, he returned home to be with his family and devote time to the causes and people he held most dear—including his wife, Jane, who passed away in 2007. He and Jane had fourteen grandchildren.

  On July 22, 2014, I sat in a hushed Old Post Chapel at Arlington National Cemetery alongside Jerry Denton’s fellow Alcatraz prisoners US Congressman Sam Johnson, Admiral Bob Shumaker, Captain Jim Mulligan, and Commander George Coker. The flag-draped casket of Admiral Jeremiah A. Denton Jr. lay before us.

  Jerry Denton III delivered a moving eulogy and recalled a line from my book Defiant. When the cards were down, I’d written, “Some POWs felt nobody but Jerry Denton had the guts to take over.”

  I thought how true that was. Jerry had guts. He defined leadership with a fearless sense of bold, almost unthinking self-sacrifice. In him, I met the rare individual who believes in duty. He went through the fire himself because his position, his code, and his oath all demanded it. He took the punches and the ropes first. If he didn’t, how could he expect others to follow his orders?

  The service ended with the singing of “God Bless America.” I thought back to when Jerry Denton had first arrived in the Philippines and closed his brief remarks with those three words. By using them, he sparked a rebirth of the phrase. Still today, presidents, elected officials, and others often close their remarks with those words. It’s important to remember that while their closings are often scripted, Jerry Denton’s words at Clark Air Base were not.

  The service ended, but the ceremony had only begun. Eight pallbearers carried the casket to a waiting caisson drawn by white mules. A band, resplendent in white navy uniforms, played hymns as the caisson and mules bore Jerry Denton’s casket into the deep green of Arlington. More than fifty sailors in white dress marched before and behind Admiral Denton’s casket. It was a beautiful pageant to watch.

  I stood alongside the surviving members of the Alcatraz Gang as they watched the US Navy bury another one of their brothers beneath Arlington’s shady oaks; Ron Storz lay nearby. Seven riflemen crack
ed the silence with three shots each, a twenty-one-gun salute. A military jet roared high overhead, paying tribute to a rare leader who showed others how to do their duty, be an example, and never surrender faith, hope, or love.

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