Bud Day, Medal of Honor recipient, dies at 88
MIAMI -- Retired Col. George "Bud" Day, a Medal of Honor recipient who spent 5 1/2 years as a POW in Vietnam and was Arizona Sen. John McCain's cellmate, has died at the age of 88, his wife said Sunday.
Day, one of the nation's most highly decorated servicemen since Gen. Douglas MacArthur and later a tireless advocate for veterans' rights, died Saturday surrounded by family at his home in Shalimar, after a long illness, Doris Day said.
"He would have died in my arms if I could have picked him up," she said.
Day received the Medal of Honor for eluding his captors for 10 days after the aircraft he was piloting was shot down over North Vietnam. In all, he earned more than 70 medals during service in World War II, Korea and Vietnam.
He was an enlisted Marine who served in the Pacific during World War II and as an Air Force pilot in the Korean and Vietnam wars.
In Vietnam, he was McCain's cellmate at one camp known as the Plantation and later in the infamous Hanoi Hilton, where he was often the highest-ranking captive. During his imprisonment, the once-muscular, 5-foot-9 Day was hung by his arms for days, tearing them from their sockets. He was freed in 1973 -- a skeletal figure of the once dashing fighter pilot. His hands and arms never functioned properly again.
"As awful as it sounds, no one could say we did not do well. [Being a POW] . . . was a major issue in my life and one that I am extremely proud of. I was just living day to day," he said in a 2008 interview. "One really bad cold and I would have been dead."
In a statement Sunday, McCain called Day a great patriot and said he owed his life to the man. "He was the bravest man I ever knew, and his fierce resistance and resolute leadership set the example for us in prison of how to return home with honor," McCain said.
Born Feb. 24, 1925, in Sioux City, Iowa, where the airport is named for him, Day joined the Marines in 1942 while still in high school. He returned home, graduated law school and passed the bar exam in 1949. He entered the Iowa National Guard in 1950 and attended flight school. He was called to active duty in the Air Force the next year and did two tours as a bomber pilot in the Korean War.
In Vietnam, Day was shot down over North Vietnam on Aug. 26, 1967. He bailed out, but the landing broke his knee and his right arm and left him temporarily blinded in one eye.
In the spring of 1968, Day's North Vietnamese captors opened his cell door and brought in McCain, who was wearing a full body cast and was nearly dead. McCain had been in isolation for seven weeks and could not wash or feed himself, Day wrote in "Return With Honor," his 1989 autobiography.
After the war and his release, Day retired to the Florida Panhandle in 1977 and practiced law, becoming a crusader for veterans' health care benefits.
