went from platoon to platoon, and when Admiral Lawrence finished, the honor code belonged to the midshipmen, and it set the highest possible standard for integrity," Perot said.

Admiral Lawrence became a Navy test pilot after graduating, an elite and dangerous assignment where pilots must push new jets to their extremes. He also came just short of being in the nation's first group of astronauts, along with friends Alan Shepard and John Glenn. He was dropped from consideration when doctors found a heart murmur.

On June 28, 1967, he was shot down over North Vietnam and taken to the notorious Hoa Lo prison, nicknamed "Hanoi Hilton" by POWs, where he was routinely tortured. He was strung up to pipes and bent into positions that he said caused the flesh tobe "literally stripped from my ankles from writhing in the irons." He was burned with cigarettes. He was stuffed into a 6-square-foot hole with no light, where he fought rats for food and developed heat sores from the high temperatures.

Once, when a high-ranking general was being punished for organizing a religious meeting, Admiral Lawrence led the POWs in singing "The Star-Spangled Banner."

"He encouraged and sustained those of us who needed it and never seemed to need it himself," said McCain, who was in a cell next to Admiral Lawrence and often communicated with him by tapping the walls and sweeping the floor in patterns.

To pass the time, he recalled very specific details from his life and wrote poetry, penning in iambic pentameter what later became Tennessee's official state