An Indomitable Spirit (Bernard Talley)

What’s the measure of a man? Is it how he handles power or where he stands in moments of great challenge and despair? The Bible says God measures a person by their heart (1 Samuel 16:7), not their position, wealth, looks, education or success. The heart of a person is their character, courage and spirit.   

Bernard L. Talley Jr., C’62, made friends easily. His childhood nickname “Bunny” stuck with him throughout his life. A graduate of Loyola High School in Towson, Maryland, and Mount St. Mary’s College, Talley earned a bachelor’s degree in economics. According to a local Star-News staff writer, “Talley was winning friends easily as he drove around town in a 1957 pink Chevrolet. He bought the car for practically nothing from this next-door neighbor, Mrs. Elizabeth Hasenkamp, who said ‘I took $1,000 off the price. He was just the politest young man.’” Talley had an early zest for life. 

Read more

Other Publications You Might Be Interested In

Remembering Sgt. Don MacPhail

For over a decade I wore a POW bracelet in Sgt. Don MacPhail’s honor and memory. This is the story of Sgt. Don MacPhail and our unique history in pictures, words, video links and newspaper files. For my 16th birthday on August 16, 1971, Irene Pfeffer gave me the bracelet

Read More »

POW Ben Pollard

Ben Pollard got a lot of mail his last week in prison, as many letters as he’d received in the preceding six years combined: four. – No matter that they dated to 1968, .and this was 1973. ; That sort of conduct “made (the iNorth Vietnamese) wonderful enemies,” said Pollard,

Read More »

Airmanship (Richard Brunhaver)

In 1967, there was a “unit” of approximately 300 Americans fighting the Vietnam Warfrom within a Hanoi prison. The unit—later named the 4th Allied POW Wing—waslocated in the drab North Vietnamese capital. Within this unit, every man had thesame job: prisoner of war.All—except three enlisted airmen—were officers, including me. Our

Read More »

The Vietnam-Era Prisoner-of-War/Missing-in-Action Database

This database is designed to assist researchers in accessing U.S. government documents related to American military personnel who are unaccounted for from the Vietnam War. The formal title of this collection is “Correlated and Uncorrelated Information Relating to Missing Americans in Southeast Asia.” The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA; formerly

Read More »

OPERATION HOMECOMING: THE STORY OF LTC (RET.) RAYMOND SCHRUMP

During the Vietnam War, there were 725 U.S. Prisoners of War (POWs). Operation Homecoming was a series of diplomatic negotiations that made the return of 591 American prisoners of war held by North Vietnam possible in 1973. The operation was divided into three phases; the first phase required the initial reception of prisoners

Read More »