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LONG ISLAND: K. McManus, Vietnam POW

BY MICHAEL AMON | michael.amon@newsday.com

August 10, 2008

Two weeks before his Vietnam tour was to end, Air Force pilot Kevin McManus' fighter plane was shot down over Hanoi. For the next five years and eight months, his home was the North Vietnamese system of prisoner of war camps known as the "Hanoi Hilton," where he later recalled conditions were filthy and torture commonplace.

More than 31 years after his 1973 release, McManus became one of many former POWs to publicly oppose the presidential candidacy of Sen. John Kerry, appearing in ads by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that damaged the Massachusetts senator's 2004 bid.

McManus, 65, died on July 31 at his home in Oakton, Va. The cause was lung cancer, his family said.

The Swift Boat campaign was McManus' first and only foray into politics, and it came only after he retired from a successful career, becoming a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force and then a defense contract consultant. He had said he was compelled to speak out because of Kerry's 1971 Senate testimony, in which the future senator said soldiers had committed war crimes in Vietnam.

"For him, it wasn't about politics, it was about being in the military and what that stood for," said his wife of 41 years, Mary Jane McManus. "What Kerry did was something none of us would ever get over."

Born in New York City and raised in Babylon, McManus graduated magna cum laude from U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., in 1964. Two years later, he was sent to Vietnam with the 390th Tactical Fighter Squadron at Danang Air Base but not before proposing to Mary Jane McCahill, also of Babylon. They married in March 1967 during a five-day furlough in Hawaii.

Three months later, McManus was shot down northeast of Hanoi. He later recalled in a PBS documentary, "Return With Honor," how village children stabbed him with bamboo as he was marched through villages. During his confinement, he said he was beaten and tortured for refusing to participate in anti-war propaganda.

One of his fellow captives in Hanoi was Navy pilot John McCain, who last week called Mary Jane McManus to express his condolences, she said.

McManus is survived by his wife and six children: Katie McManus, of Arlington, Va.; Bryan McManus and Molly McManus, both of Fairfax, Va.; John McManus and Lizzie McManus, both of Oakton, Va., and Maggie McManus of Eagle, Colo.; his sister, Karen McManus of Alexandria, Va.; and two brothers, Robert McManus of Massapequa, and Christopher McManus of Washington, D.C. He was preceded in death by son Kevin Roderic "Rory" McManus in 1999.