Wayne Goodermote rarely opened up about his nearly six years of incarceration in North Vietnam prison camps, where he was blindfolded and moved from one detention facility to another.
The Poway resident wasn’t one to dwell on the past.
That changed on the 50th anniversary of his highly publicized March 14, 1973, release from Hoa Lò Prison, better known as the “Hanoi Hilton,” along with other POWs.
On March 14, 2023, close San Diego friends celebrated the anniversary of his release, and Goodermote shared a brief glimpse inside his military experience.
It wasn’t until two and a half years after his plane was shot down over North Vietnam near the Chinese border that word emerged of his survival from a visiting delegation. His mother had been notified that he was MIA and presumed dead.
After a long battle with chronic pulmonary disease, which tethered him to oxygen, Goodermote died at home on April 20. He was 79.
The week before Memorial Day, he was laid to rest with military honors at Miramar National Cemetery.
Bob Russell, a fellow San Diego Rotarian and close friend, relayed pieces of his story.
Navy LTJG Wayne Goodermote was the radar/navigation officer the day his plane was shot down. He was on a high-speed photo reconnaissance mission from the Constellation aircraft carrier trailing a U.S. bombing raid.
It was especially dangerous because the approach followed the U.S. attack route, and the Vietnamese would be expecting a follow-up surveillance pass over.
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.
As the pilot, Lt. Cmdr. Leo Hyatt, had predicted, their RA-5C Vigilante was targeted by anti-aircraft guns as they neared the bombing site.
When they were hit, Goodermote lost consciousness and didn’t recall ejecting from the plane. 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.
His parachute opened and he regained consciousness about 30 feet above ground and was taken prisoner. The pilot also survived, but the two captives were never together over the next five years and seven months.
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 name Goodermote was printed across the helmet.
He was born in Troy, N.Y., near Albany, and raised in the nearby town of Berlin. Goodermote was commissioned and attended Naval flight school in 1965 through his involvement in the University of Rochester ROTC program.
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 told his friends about playing a trick on one of his captors who wanted to learn English. The guard repeatedly pointed to a coffee cup. Goodermote grasped his request and taught him to say “bulls—t.”
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.
“I asked him what happened next,” Russell says. To which Goodermote had replied, “The guy came back and beat the crap out of me.”
His widow, Patty, recalled, “When he was a POW, he gave the guards a tough time. 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.”
Employing his characteristic sense of humor, he had told her: “I had to earn my salary.”
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.”
Goodermote credited Bill Butler, his POW cellmate for four years, with saving his life in prison. How? Butler told him to stop messing with the guards or they were going to kill him.
“From that day on I quit messing with those guards … well, pretty much,” Goodermote told Russell.
Among his U.S. comrades at the Hanoi Hilton were Vice Adm. James Stockdale, of Coronado, Capt. John McCain and Rear Adm. 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.
The release of the POWs in 1973, was huge news. 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.
Comedian 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.
Last month nearly 150 of them gathered again to be honored at a 50-year re-enactment of the banquet on May 24. This time, it was held at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda. Floral arrangements were replicated, the same meal was served and, as in 1973, the evening ended with the singing of “God Bless America.”
The celebration took place the day after Goodermote’s memorial service.
After his release, he remained in the Navy but switched from aviation to civil engineering and pursued his longtime dream of studying architecture. He served at bases in Bangor, Wash., Guam, Coronado, Washington, D.C. and, before retiring as a captain in 1991, as officer in charge of the Broadway Complex Redevelopment Project in San Diego.
He worked as a civilian for a few more years, officially retiring in 1997 to pursue his hobbies of woodworking, gardening and involvement in the San Diego Rotary Club, for which he was president in 2011-’12.
He rarely spoke about his military service. “Sometimes it comes up. I don’t go around talking about it,” Goodermote told a reporter for the Albany Times Union during an interview about his POW experience.
“I prefer people accept me for what I am rather than what I was. … I wasn’t a hero. I was a survivor.”
His medals included a Purple Heart and two Bronze Stars. But he prized a large brick he kept on his desk. It was retrieved from the Hanoi Hilton prison when it was partially demolished in 1994.
When asked how he wanted to be remembered, Goodermote said, not as a war a hero and not as a POW. He wanted to be remembered for the good things he did, including helping establish a Rotary college scholarship fund for students in need.
But he most wanted to be remembered for doing things his way. At his request, his memorial plaque includes the engraving: “I did it my way.”
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