It's been seven years since retired Vice Adm. James B. Stockdale served -- like a fish out of water -- as Ross Perot's running mate in the 1992 presidential race.
During a visit this week to his alma mater, the Naval Academy, the former test pilot and prisoner of war was more in his element, talking enthusiastically and poetically about how pain shaped his life.
Stockdale spent three days lecturing to and having lunch with midshipmen who weren't even born when he was released from a North Vietnamese prison in 1973, after 7 1/2 years of torture. He spoke to the school's ethics professors and dined with the superintendent. He and his wife signed hundreds of books, including their 1984 co-written best seller, "In Love and War."
In three weeks, Stockdale will turn 76. And, despite his peculiar and brief moment on the political stage seven years ago, he is in demand. People beg him to speak to their groups, to tell how he -- and his wife, Sybil -- have survived. He told his story at West Point earlier this year and is headed to the Air Force Academy in a few months. His books continue to sell.
And lately, people have been calling his home outside San Diego to ask about another former POW, Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican.
Stockdale had been in prison two years when McCain was shot down and captured. When questions recently arose about McCain's stability for the job of president, Stockdale came to his defense, calling such questions "blasphemy." In a column for the New York Times last week, Stockdale called McCain "solid as a rock" and a more stable man as a result of his imprisonment.
"He's quick and he's smart and he's direct and he's a lot of fun and he's honest and he's tough," Stockdale said yesterday during an after-lunch interview. "He's a fighter."
Stockdale, wearing his Medal of Honor on a blue ribbon, said prison makes a man stronger, not weaker. He should know.
James Bond Stockdale grew up in Abingdon, Ill. His father was a Navy veteran who helped run a pottery plant. His mother was a schoolteacher. He graduated from the Naval Academy in 1947 with classmate, later president, Jimmy Carter, then went on to fly experimental jets at Patuxent River Naval Air Station with test pilots named John Glenn and Alan Shepard, both to become astronauts.
