7 years in Hanoi: Retired captain reflects on time as Airman POW (Art Cormier)

Graduates from one of Lackland’s last Officer Candidate School classes, including an honorary class member and former Vietnam prisoner of war, reunited here to commemorate their 50th-year anniversary.

Members of OCS Class 62-A, which graduated Sept. 22, 1961, were honored as special guests during the Sept. 23 Air Force Basic Military Training graduation parade.

Among the class members and spouses in attendance was retired Air Force Capt. Art Cormier, an honorary OCS class member and former enlisted POW who spent seven years incarcerated in Hanoi. Cormier, who never graduated from OCS, washed out after about three months.

Other Publications You Might Be Interested In

Former Vietnam POW Gaither ‘stood tall’ in captivity

Dozens attended a funeral service at Barrancas National Cemetery (BNC) onboard Naval Air Station (NAS) Pensacola May 16 for retired Cmdr. Ralph Ellis Gaither Jr., a naval aviator well-known in the Pensacola community as a Vietnam veteran and Prisoner of War (POW) who had exemplified defiance while in enemy hands.

Read More »

This Day in History: Vice Admiral William P. Lawrence

On this day in 2005, retired Navy Vice Admiral William “Bill” Lawrence passes away. Decades earlier, Lawrence had been a prisoner of war at the Hanoi Hilton. He was one of the highest-ranking members of our military to be held in that infamous prison. Trouble began in June 1967. Lawrence

Read More »