Laying to Rest an American Hero in Arlington National Cemetery: Rear Admiral Jeremiah A. Denton, Jr.

Tomorrow morning, July 22, 2014, Rear Admiral Jeremiah A. Denton, Jr. will be laid to rest with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va.

The services will begin at 8:45 AM at the Old Post Chapel where Senator Jeff Sessions and Representative Sam Johnson are expected to give remarks. The ceremonies will also include a 13 cannon-salute, a 21 gun-salute and a military fly-over.

Rear Admiral Jeremiah A. Denton, Jr.

Rear Admiral Jeremiah A. Denton, Jr.

Admiral Denton, a retired Naval rear admiral and former U.S. senator who survived nearly eight years of captivity in North Vietnamese prisons, and whose public acts of defiance and patriotism came to embody the sacrifices of American POWs in Vietnam, died March 28, 2014 at a hospice in Virginia Beach. He was 89.

President Reagan in his 1st State of the Union address in 1983 stated of Admiral Denton, “We don’t have to turn to our history books for heroes, they are all around us. One who sits among you here tonight epitomized that heroism … .”

Admiral Denton, also served as the president of the Thomas More Law Center’s Citizens Advisory Board. The Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, helped share Denton’s commitment to faith, family and the preservation of traditional values.

Admiral Denton, first captured the attention of the nation when in a television appearance orchestrated by the North Vietnamese as propaganda and broadcast in the United States in 1966, he appeared in his prison uniform and blinked the word “torture” in Morse code — a secret message to U.S. military intelligence for which he later received the Navy Cross.

At one point, the reporter asked him what he thought about the “so-called Vietnamese War.”

“Well, I don’t know what is happening,” Adm. Denton replied. “But whatever the position of my government is, I support it fully. . . . I am a member of that government, and it is my job to support it, and I will as long as I live.”

Adm. Denton was subjected to four years in solitary confinement. Living in roach- and rat-infested conditions, he endured starvation, delirium and torture sessions that sometimes lasted days.

On Feb. 12, 1973, shortly after the signing of the Paris Peace Accords that helped end U.S. involvement in the war, Adm. Denton and hundreds of other POWs began coming home. He was the first returnee to disembark from the plane at Clark Air Base in the Philippines.

“We are profoundly grateful to our commander in chief and to our nation for this day,” he said in remarks on behalf of his fellow POWs. “God bless America.”

Jeremiah Andrew Denton Jr. was born on July 15, 1924, in Mobile, Ala. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1946 and received a master’s degree in international affairs from George Washington University in 1964.

He was promoted during his captivity to the rank of captain and later to rear admiral. After the war, he served as commandant of the Armed Forces Staff College at Norfolk, Va., and retired from the Navy in 1977.

In addition to the Navy Cross, his honors included the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, three awards of the Silver Star and the Distinguished Flying Cross. 

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