Harry Tarleton Jenkins |
| Posted 2009-01-27 by Judy Wight Branson |
| St. Petersburg Times, St. Petersburg, Florida Wednesday, August 9, 1995 Capt. Harry Tarleton Jenkins Jr., a Naval officer who was a POW in North Vietnam for more than seven years, has died in the crash of a light plane in Arizona. He was 68 years old. He died Aug. 2 after a Long Eze, an experimental two-seater light plane he built from a kit about five years ago, suddenly lost power while taking off from Prescott Municipal Airport. On Nov. 13, 1965, Capt. Jenkins was shot down while piloting an A-4E Skyhawk on his 155th mission over North Vietnam. For years, his fate remained unknown. He was put in prison in Hanoi in a cell next to that of his former wing commander, Capt. James B. Stockdale, who had been shot down about two months earlier. Stockdale, later a vice admiral, was Ross Perot's running mate in the 1992 presidential campaign. Capt. Jenkins and Stockdale were among 12 American servicemen to be placed in solitary confinement for refusing to cooperate with their communist jailers. Of Capt. Jenkins' 87 months as a prisoner of war, he spent 46 in solitary confinement. He said later that he kept his sanity by deriving calculus equations in his head and by mentally reviewing college courses and books. His family was left in doubt about his fate for more than five years; in December 1971, the North Vietnamese indicated in a six-line message that he was alive. After the United States signed a four-party peace pact in January 1973, Capt. Jenkins was released along with some 590 American prisoners. He returned to his family in February 1973 bearing a dirty, cracked porcelain cup - the only dish he used during his long ordeal. After the Vietnam War, he was active in the campaign to get a full accounting from Hanoi of American servicemen held prisoner and or missing in action. |
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