Fifty Years After Their Release, Former Vietnam POWs Journey Back to Hanoi

The Cookie Caper (Robert Purcell)
“The Cookie Caper” In Honor of Col Robert B. “Percy” Purcell, Prisonerof War: North Vietnam (July 1965 – February 1973)
Fifty Years After Their Release, Former Vietnam POWs Journey Back to Hanoi

“The Cookie Caper” In Honor of Col Robert B. “Percy” Purcell, Prisonerof War: North Vietnam (July 1965 – February 1973)

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

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 the traditional “I do’s” and exchange of wedding bands some 54 years ago on Oct. 1, 1955, James and Phyllis Hivner began their life’s journey together which, like many young couples, began with not knowing what the future held. That journey was rocked 10 years later, almost to the day, when then-Capt.

The specially modified, intelligence-gathering C-47 plane lifted off from Vientiane, the capital of Laos, March 23, 1961, and headed north toward Xieng Khouangville, a Communist-held area. The experienced Air Force crew was accompanied by Army Maj. Lawrence R. Bailey, a Laurel resident serving as the assistant Army attache in Vientiane.