Retired Col. Bud Day dies at age 88

MIAMI — Retired Col. George “Bud” Day, a Medal of Honor recipient who spent 51⁄ years as a POW in Vietnam and was Arizona Sen. John McCain’s cellmate, has died at the age of 88, his widow 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.

Day received the Medal of Honor for escaping 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 serving in the Pacific during World War II and an Air Force pilot in the Korean and Vietnam wars.

In Vietnam, he was McCain’s cellmate at a camp known as the Plantation and later in the Hanoi Hilton, where he was often the highest-ranking captive. During his imprisonment, the oncemuscular, 5-foot-9 Day was hung by his arms for days, tearing them from their sockets. He was freed in1973 — 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 manI 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.