He may have spent more time in a North Vietnamese prison cell than any other Nebraskan, and his family would like those seven years and five months acknowledged with a Seward cemetery flyover by U.S. Navy pilots next week.

As of Tuesday afternoon, that flyover was not a done deal, but the stepson of retired Navy Capt. Wendell “Wendy” Rivers said planes remain a priority.

“We’d be very disappointed if the Navy did not honor one of their own,” David Pettijohn said from San Antonio.

Seward native Rivers ejected from his Skyhawk A-4E over North Vietnam in September 1965 after a bomb exploded prematurely and blew off a wing. He languished in a Hanoi prison cell, sometimes in solitary confinement and sometimes tortured, until February 1973.

He died in San Antonio on Saturday at age 80.

Betty Rivers remembered seeing her future husband back on American soil for the first time in more than  seven years on television on Feb. 15, 1973.

“He was incredibly thin, gaunt looking,” she said Tuesday from San Antonio. “He had lost all but four of his teeth. Other than that, he was in amazing health.”

Between 1965 and 1973, the 1946 Seward High School graduate and his prisoner peers “did an amazing job of keeping each other sane,” she said.

“He always did the right thing,” she said. “He was faithful to his country and to his family — very loving, an American hero.”

Arizona Sen. John McCain, confined in the same prison after his plane was shot down in October 1967, conveyed his condolences from Washington, D.C., Tuesday through spokeswoman Leah Geach.

“The senator knew him well and remembers him fondly and was sorry to hear he passed away,” Geach said.

As he sailed toward Vietnam on the U.S.S. Coral Sea in 1964, Rivers left behind three children, sons Stephen and Stewart, ages 10 and 4, and daughter Charlotte, 8.

“I was almost 17 when he came home,” said Charlotte “Gex” Morgan.

Despite their long separation, Morgan said she kept hoping and praying. They had no trouble rekindling their relationship. “He was my daddy,” she said.

Pettijohn and his sister, Darcy Osborne, were Betty Rivers’ children from a previous marriage. Her second marriage in 1981 was a reunion with her high school sweetheart.

Wendell Rivers was senior class president, an all-conference football and basketball player, and an 880-yard track specialist at Seward High School.

He was part of the class that entered the U.S. Naval Academy in 1948 and received his active duty commission in 1952. A multiple medal winner, he retired in 1976.

Among his military honors were the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit with Star, the Bronze Star and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Rivers was a special guest of honor at the July 4, 1974, Fourth of July celebration in Seward. He spoke of his long absence from his hometown in a July 5, 1974, Journal-Star article.

“From the very beginning, all of us were convinced that some day we would all come home,” he said in that interview.

But Rivers also said he felt “morally shattered” when then-President Nixon stopped the bombing over North Vietnam in 1972 “without action to take us out.”

Source: JournalStar.com     US Naval Academy