![]() ![]() Last month nearly 150 of them gathered again to be honored at a 50-year re-enactment of the banquet on May 24. A heroes’ welcome was given to Goodermote and 590 of his fellow POWs with a lavish dinner reception hosted by President Richard Nixon in a huge tent on the South Lawn of the White House.Ĭomedian Bob Hope was the emcee as POWs and their families mingled with 1,600 guests, including John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Phyllis Diller and Sammy Davis Jr. The release of the POWs in 1973, was huge news. Jeremiah Denton, who famously blinked “T-O-R-T-U-R-E” with his eyelids in Morse code during a televised North Vietnamese propaganda interview. comrades at the Hanoi Hilton were Vice Adm. well, pretty much,” Goodermote told Russell.Īmong his U.S. “From that day on I quit messing with those guards. How? Butler told him to stop messing with the guards or they were going to kill him. Goodermote credited Bill Butler, his POW cellmate for four years, with saving his life in prison. When he was awarded the Silver Star for “gallantry and intrepidity” as a POW, it was noted that his captors “subjected him to extreme mental and physical cruelties in an attempt to obtain military information and false confessions for propaganda purposes.” He got beaten up a lot.” She didn’t expand on his maltreatment, saying only, “He talked about different things they did, and it was not nice.”Įmploying his characteristic sense of humor, he had told her: “I had to earn my salary.” His widow, Patty, recalled, “When he was a POW, he gave the guards a tough time. To which Goodermote had replied, “The guy came back and beat the crap out of me.” “I asked him what happened next,” Russell says. The ruse was discovered what the guard proudly presented his new English word to his slightly more knowledgeable comrades and became the butt of their jokes. Goodermote grasped his request and taught him to say “bulls-t.” The guard repeatedly pointed to a coffee cup. Goodermote told his friends about playing a trick on one of his captors who wanted to learn English. ![]() He had a reputation for not suffering fools gladly, and it got him into hot water as a prisoner, where the guards wielded the power. Goodermote was commissioned and attended Naval flight school in 1965 through his involvement in the University of Rochester ROTC program. He was born in Troy, N.Y., near Albany, and raised in the nearby town of Berlin. The name Goodermote was printed across the helmet. Goodermote’s theory was bolstered when an American visiting North Vietnam in recent years spied a bashed-in helmet in a military museum there and took a photo. The pilot also survived, but the two captives were never together over the next five years and seven months. His parachute opened and he regained consciousness about 30 feet above ground and was taken prisoner. He told his friends that, in retrospect, he believes a fuel tank behind his seat exploded when they were struck, propelling them out of the cockpit. When they were hit, Goodermote lost consciousness and didn’t recall ejecting from the plane. Leo Hyatt, had predicted, their RA-5C Vigilante was targeted by anti-aircraft guns as they neared the bombing site. Usually, the photography crew takes a different flight path, but the pilot later told reporters his commanding officer disregarded his objection that it was a suicide mission and ordered him to follow the attack route because it would provide the best photo documentation of the strike damage.Īs the pilot, Lt. attack route, and the Vietnamese would be expecting a follow-up surveillance pass over. ![]() It was especially dangerous because the approach followed the U.S. He was on a high-speed photo reconnaissance mission from the Constellation aircraft carrier trailing a U.S. Navy LTJG Wayne Goodermote was the radar/navigation officer the day his plane was shot down. (Denver Post/Denver Post via Getty Images)īob Russell, a fellow San Diego Rotarian and close friend, relayed pieces of his story. ![]()
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