Lt. Col. Harlan Chapman, Vermilion businessman and Vietnam War POW (Campbell)

Lorain County native Lt. Col. Harlan Page Chapman, a veteran who spent seven years as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, died on Monday at his home in Green Valley, Arizona.

Chapman, 89, had lived in Arizona with his wife, Frances “Fran” Chapman, since 2015 and was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and early-stage dementia in 2017.

Fran said that her husband seldom talked about his time imprisoned in Vietnam, but that it was one of the two main experiences that shaped the man he was.

The other, she said, was growing up in Lorain County.

Chapman was born in Carlisle Township on Sept. 27, 1934 to Josephine and Harlan T. Chapman. He graduated from Elyria High School in 1952 and went on to attend Miami University in Oxford, graduating in 1956.

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