Former Vietnam POW fights to restore his idea of moral nation

Jeremiah Denton Jr. had endured nearly eight years of confinement and torture in a Vietnam prisoner-of-war camp, but it wasn't until his recuperation at Portsmouth Naval Hospital in 1973 that he finally snapped.

As part of their therapy, Denton and other POWs were shown a film illustrating the cultural changes that had rocked the nation since the Navy aviator's A6 Intruder was shot down in 1965.

As he watched scenes of the 1969 Woodstock music festival, showing "hippies fornicating publicly, high on drugs," Denton wrote later, he became physically ill and threw up. That was enough, he told the therapists: He couldn't watch any more.

"To me, it was a nightmare," he wrote. "This nation, firmly founded as One Nation under God, was in the process of becoming a pagan nation with a shocking degeneration of national integrity."

That scene is from the updated version of Denton's book, "When Hell Was in Session," which is being released today in honor of Veterans Day.

Co-written by Ed Brandt, a former Virginian-Pilot editor, and originally published in 1975, the book tells the story of Denton's captivity during what was, until then at least, America's longest war. Throughout his imprisonment, his wife, Jane, and seven children lived in Virginia Beach.

The book includes a well-known episode in which Denton, in a TV interview, blinked his eyes in Morse code to spell out the word "torture."

The updated version picks up the story after his release and details his subsequent engagement in another kind of combat: the culture war.

It's a war he is still fighting today, at 85.

After his release, Denton became commandant at the Armed Forces Staff College, now the Joint Forces Staff College, in Norfolk. He retired from the Navy as a rear admiral in 1977 and went into politics, serving six years as a U.S. senator from Alabama during Ronald Reagan's presidency.

"I wanted to go help Reagan out, because I thought he was my brother," Denton said in an interview. "And he turned out to be that."

He looks back with pride on his efforts to advance Reagan's agenda, including supporting the anti-communist Contras in Nicaragua and opposing the nuclear freeze movement.

Always known as an uncompromising conservative, Denton, who now lives in Williamsburg, shows no signs of mellowing.

Here, for instance, is his take on President Barack Obama: "Our present president is not qualified by experience or knowledge to be a commander in chief. Unless he will listen to the inputs of those who are qualified in the arts of warfare and statesmanship, we'll remain in increasing danger every day."

Denton favors beefing up military spending to meet today's security threats. But even more important, he has come to believe, is rescuing the nation from its slide into moral degeneracy.

The signs are everywhere, he writes in his book: abortion, pornography, drug abuse, pre marital sex, gay marriage.

"In this world of weapons of mass destruction, yes, we could get wiped out tomorrow," he said.

"But I think the decline in our culture is a surer poison. Every nation that has gone the same route has disappeared within 200 years. I'm trying to draw our national attention to that."

This is a man who believes God once spoke to him, out loud.

It was 1967, two years into his captivity. He was pacing in his cell, shackled in irons, on the brink of despair. The prison was quiet except for an occasional scream from the torture room.

In his super-conscious sensitive state, he heard a soft voice - authoritative, kind, well-modulated: "Say, 'Sacred heart of Jesus, I give myself to you.' "

It was a prescription for prayer, Denton said: "He meant, 'Don't sweat it. You can't control anything. Just give your thoughts, yourself, to me.' "

Can the cultural tide be turned? Denton doesn't know. All he can do is try.

"If I can help get God's will done before I die, I want to," he said. "I don't have any choice. My dear wife died two years ago, and I don't have anything else to do that's better than this."

Bill Sizemore, (757) 446-2276, bill.sizemore@pilotonline.com