Dewey Waddell was born on February 14, 1939, in Greenville, South Carolina. He grew up in a close family, did well in school, and had the kind of athletic ability that earned him a football scholarship to Clemson University. But football was never where his heart was. From early on, Dewey was drawn to the sky. He left behind the football field and joined the U.S. Air Force, training to become a fighter pilot — a career that would define the rest of his life.
Dewey was assigned to the 555th Tactical Fighter Squadron, nicknamed the “Triple Nickel.” He flew the F-4 Phantom II, a twin-engine jet that was one of the most capable and widely used aircraft of the Vietnam War era. By the time he was deployed to Southeast Asia, Dewey had logged more than 1,000 flight hours in the Phantom — a serious amount of stick time that made him one of the more experienced pilots in his unit.
On July 5, 1967, a mission over North Vietnam ended in disaster. Dewey’s aircraft was shot down, forcing him to eject and parachute to the ground below. He was captured almost immediately by Vietnamese communist fighters. Within days, he was taken to Hoa Lo Prison in Hanoi — a place American POWs grimly nicknamed the “Hanoi Hilton.” He would not leave for nearly six years.
The picture was made for propaganda purposes, which is why a diminutive woman was used as the guard, in order to portray the captured airman as less heroic.
Life inside Hoa Lo was brutal. Prisoners endured harsh interrogations, psychological torture, malnutrition, and near-total isolation. Medical care was essentially nonexistent. The North Vietnamese used the prison as a tool — extracting propaganda statements, breaking down resistance, and keeping men cut off from the outside world. For Dewey and his fellow POWs, every day was a test of how much a person could endure.
The men refused to break entirely. One of their most important tools was the tap code — a simple system of knocking on walls and floors that let prisoners communicate across cells. Through taps and knocks, they shared information, kept each other’s spirits up, and even exchanged jokes. It sounds small, but in a place designed to isolate and demoralize, those brief exchanges were a lifeline. The bonds the prisoners formed under those conditions were as strong as anything forged in combat.
Back in the United States, Dewey’s wife Judy was fighting her own battle. She refused to stay quiet or wait passively for news. Along with other POW wives and family members, Judy helped establish the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia. The organization pushed hard to keep the POW issue in the public eye and pressured the U.S. government to make the return of prisoners a priority in peace negotiations. It was painstaking, exhausting work — and Judy took it on without slowing down.
She wrote letters and sent packages to Dewey throughout his captivity. Most of them were never delivered. The North Vietnamese controlled all communication in and out of the prison, and they used that control deliberately. Despite receiving almost nothing back, Judy kept writing. For six years, she held onto the belief that her husband was alive and that he would come home.
On February 12, 1973, Dewey Waddell walked free. He was released as part of Operation Homecoming, a negotiated agreement between the United States and North Vietnam to repatriate American prisoners of war. After nearly six years behind bars, he stepped back into a world that had changed dramatically — and reunited with Judy, whose determination had never wavered through all of it.
Rebuilding a normal life after years of captivity was not a simple or fast process, but Dewey moved forward steadily. He stayed in the Air Force and earned a master’s degree in human relations from the University of Oklahoma — no small achievement for a man who had spent years in conditions designed to grind people down. He retired from the Air Force in 1981 with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and went on to work in the private sector.
