[msb-alumni] Sam Johnson, 89, a Pilot, A P.O.W. Alongside McCain And a 28-Year Congressman, Died on May 27, 2020
- From: Steve <pipeguy920@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <msb-alumni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 14:50:08 -0400
BlankSam Johnson, 89, a Pilot, A P.O.W. Alongside McCain And a 28-Year
Congressman.
By John Schwartz.
A much-decorated pilot held by the North Vietnamese for years, he would later
criticize his fellow Republican Donald Trump for disparaging John McCain. Sam
Johnson, a former military pilot who suffered torture as a prisoner of war in
North
Vietnam for nearly seven years, part of that time alongside John McCain, then
came
home to Texas to serve for 28 years in Congress, died on Wednesday in Plano,
Texas.
He was 89. A family representative, Ray Sullivan, confirmed the death, at a
hospital.
As a member of Congress representing a conservative suburban district north of
Dallas, Mr. Johnson, a 29-year veteran of the Air Force, was an ardent champion
of
American troops and veterans and sought to bring financial stability to the
Social
Security program. Though reliably conservative, he was willing to work across
the
aisle to pass legislation.
Representative Lloyd Doggett, a liberal fellow Texan who represents Austin,
recalled
in an interview that in 2015 he and Mr. Johnson joined forces on a privacy
measure
that altered Medicare cards so that they no longer displayed Social Security
numbers.
"We seldom agreed on anything" in politics,Mr. Doggett said, but "I had immense
respect for him. You could see from looking at him," he added, "looking at his
hand,
that he went through such brutality in Vietnam -- and really was a true
American
hero."
Throughout his time in the House of Representatives, Mr. Johnson referred to
his
wartime experiences as a way to frame political conflicts of the moment.
During the 1992 presidential campaign, he criticized Bill Clinton for a trip
Mr.
Clinton had taken to Moscow as a college student in 1970 -- when, as Mr.
Johnson put
it, "I was sitting in a P.O.W. camp in Vietnam eating fish eyes and pig fat."
In the 2000 presidential primaries, despite having shared a cell with Mr.
McCain in
the quarters that its prisoners called the "Hanoi Hilton," Mr. Johnson endorsed
George W. Bush for the Republican nomination over Mr. McCain, who by then was a
United States senator from Arizona. In 2004, Mr. Johnson disparaged another
Democratic presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry, who as a young decorated
Vietnam veteran had taken a public stance against the war. Mr. Johnson called
him
"Hanoi John."
And in 2015, in an essay in Politico, he criticized Donald J. Trump, then a
Republican candidate for president, for his comments belittling Senator Mr.
McCain
for having been captured in North Vietnam. Comments "suggesting that veterans
like
Senator John McCain or any other of America's honorable P.O.W.s are less brave
for
having been captured," Mr. Johnson wrote, "are not only misguided -- they are
ungrateful and naive."
Samuel Robert Johnson Jr. was born Oct. 11, 1930, in San Antonio to Samuel and
Mima
(Nabors) Johnson. His father was in the insurance business, and his mother
worked for
Western Union. He graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in Dallas and
attended
Southern Methodist University there, from which he graduated in 1951 with a
bachelor's degree in business administration, focusing on insurance and real
estate.
After joining the Air Force, he flew 62 combat missions in the Korean War and
25 in
the Vietnam War. He was shot down on that 25th mission, after the famously
balky guns
of his F-4 Phantom II jammed.
Parachuting out of the jet, which was on fire, he broke his back and his right
arm
and severely injured his left arm on striking the ground in North Vietnamese
territory, where he was captured -- a sequence of events that paralleled what
happened to Mr. McCain.
At the Hanoi Hilton, the torture was unending. When not being interrogated or
beaten
in the rat-infested prison, Mr. Johnson was often immobilized in leg stocks, he
recalled in "Captive Warriors: A Vietnam POW's Story" (1992, with Jan
Winebrenner).
Of Mr. Johnson's nearly seven years in captivity, 42 months were in solitary
confinement -- the punishment for "hard-core resisters," as he put it. These
included
Jeremiah A. Denton Jr., a Navy commander who, like Mr. McCain, would serve in
the
United States Senate, and James B. Stockdale, a decorated Navy pilot who would
become
Ross Perot's running mate in his 1992 run for the presidency.
Mr. Denton, who famously blinked the word T-O-R-T-U-R-E in Morse code during a
North
Vietnamese propaganda broadcast, taught Mr. Johnson a "tap code" so that they
could
communicate through the walls of their cells. Mr. Denton later led a camp
hunger
strike that got Mr. Johnson released from solitary confinement after three and
a half
years. He (Johnson) was released from the prison altogether in 1973.
After returning from Vietnam, he attended the Elliott School of International
Affairs
at George Washington University, receiving a master's degree in 1976. He
retired from
the military in 1979 as a colonel, having earned two Purple Hearts, two Silver
Stars,
two Legions of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Bronze Star with
valor.
He was selected to fly with the Thunderbirds, the precision Air Force flying
team.
While a student at S.M.U.,
Mr. Johnson had met Shirley Melton, and they married in 1950. In Korea, he
named his
F-86 Shirley's Texas Tornado. She died in 2015. Their son, James, died in 2013.
His
survivors include his daughters, Beverly Briney and Gini Mulligan; 10
grandchildren;
and five great-grandchildren.
Mr. Johnson won a seat in the Texas House of Representatives in 1984 and served
there
until 1991, when he successfully ran for Congress in a special election. He
announced
his retirement from the House of Representatives in 2017, saying he would not
seek
re-election in 2018.
Rick Perry, the former Texas governor and secretary of energy, began his own
state
legislative career the same year Mr. Johnson did, 1985.
A former Air Force pilot himself, Mr. Perry acknowledged in a phone interview
that he
had been awed by Mr. Johnson, whose reputation as a famous flier and war hero
preceded him. "If I am having a bad day and feeling sorry for myself, very
often my
good angel reminds me of people like Sam Johnson, what they went through," Mr.
Perry
said. He recalled that in 1990, Mr. Johnson was flying his six-seater Piper
PA-32
airplane near Dallas when it developed mechanical problems and crash-landed.
Mr.
Johnson suffered burns over 16 percent of his body. (His co-pilot and one of
his two
passengers were also hospitalized.)
When Mr. Perry saw Mr. Johnson again after the accident, he recalled, he joked,
"Man,
you can't keep those airplanes in the sky!"
Mr. Johnson responded, "At least I didn't get shot down this time."
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