BERLIN – The final 10 miles of U.S. Navy Lt. Wayne K. Goodermote’s trip home after nearly six years of captivity as a prisoner of war at the Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War was like a cinematic blur.
In the spring of 1973, Goodermote got a hero’s welcome along a stretch of the rural Route 22 headed north to a waiting ceremony in Berlin.
“There were signs for miles coming into town. Yellow ribbons on all the trees and telephone poles. It was a shock. They had a band. People showed up in droves,” recalled Goodermote during a telephone interview last week from his home outside San Diego.
“I wasn’t a hero. I was a survivor,” said Goodermote, a retired Navy captain.
It’s been 50 years since the Vietnam War ended on March 29, 1973, with the withdrawal of American combat troops from Vietnam. It’s been a half-century since Goodermote, now 79, stepped out of the car March 31, 1973, and was swarmed by family, friends, neighbors and strangers in the heart of the small Rensselaer County town.
“The crowd went wild. Everybody was clapping and smiling,” said Sharon Klein, 81, Berlin town historian and Goodermote’s friend since primary school.
The path to POW
On Aug. 13, 1967, Goodermote was on his 33rd combat mission as the navigator and radar officer aboard a RA-5C Vigilante, a nuclear bomber developed for the Navy and converted to a reconnaissance jet, when he and pilot Cdr. Leo G. Hyatt were shot down over North Vietnam near the Chinese border. They were following up a bombing raid to photograph the results.
They were part of the RVAH-12 squadron nicknamed the Speartips. They were flying from the aircraft carrier USS Constellation.
Goodermote and Hyatt were listed as missing in action for nearly two years until their presence at the notorious Hanoi Hilton prison where…
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