Conroe Courier November 3, 2023

Six years, nine months and four days — that’s the length of time 1959 Conroe graduate Col. James E. Ray spent as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. 

He was shot down on Mother’s Day 1966 and was released two days before Valentine’s Day 1973. Upon his return home to Conroe, the city hosted a parade around the downtown square and celebration at Tiger Stadium in early March 1973 where the stadium was filled with supporters.

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To commemorate the 50th anniversary of his release, Ray will be the featured speaker at a Veteran’s Day event hosted by the Heritage Museum of Montgomery County. His talk will be at the Owen Theatre, 225 Metcalf Street Nov. 11. Doors open at noon with his talk beginning at 1 p.m. 

No ticket is needed and the theater will have open seating. 

Ray, 82, was born in Longview, Texas. His dad was a high-school science teacher in a small town north of Longview and the family moved to Conroe to further his dad’s teaching career. His dad, Frank, taught biology, and his mother, Norma, was the secretary at Sam Houston Elementary in the 1960s. The Rays were also very involved in Conroe’s First Baptist Church. 

Conroe days

He said there were about 7,000 people in Conroe when his family moved here in the mid-1950s. 

“You came in the front door of Sam Houston Elementary and Mrs. Ray was the first person you were going to see there,” said Suann Hereford, executive director of the Heritage Museum.  

Ray went to school with Hereford’s parents and as a girl at Sam Houston Elementary, she recalls the school children writing letters to Ray and the other POWs that were sent to the North Vietnamese government. The children also had MIA bracelets as reminders of Ray’s POW status. 

“He was a big part of Conroe when I was growing up, even though he wasn’t here,” she said. “To us he was a hero.” 

Ray attended and graduated from Conroe High School in 1959. He went on to attend Texas A&M University. He was commissioned through the Air Force ROTC Program on Jan. 17, 1964, and went on active duty to begin pilot training on April 20, 1964. 

Serving in Vietnam

He arrived in Southeast Asia in April 1966 and was only on his 13th mission when his plane was hit over North Vietnam while carrying out a mission. 

He said they were targeting a particular bridge that day and he was flying an F-105 Thunderchief fighter-bomber when he was struck. 

“Just before bomb release I started to get more and more warning lights,” he said. As the leader of the fighter group circled around to inspect the damage to Ray’s plane, he radioed Ray that his plane was on fire. 

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His next communication to Ray was “Your plane is on fire, get out, get out, get out.” The loss of hydraulic fluid led Ray to eject upward out of the plane. 

“When you hit the trigger it fires you out with a cannon shell and you black out for a few seconds. As you go up the centrifugal force drains all the blood out of your head,” he said. “As you stabilize, then your heart can pump and get blood back to your brain and you come to. As I was coming to, I noticed how incredibly quiet it was, then I began to hear the air fluttering around the edges of the parachute.” 

He landed in enemy territory and was captured soon after. His captor pointed out an injury to his arm and helped him wrap up the wound to create a pressure bandage. 

“I thought that was pretty decent of him,” Ray said. 

He was taken to a small village, then a farmhouse, then an Army camp. 

“That started a journey that would last six years, nine months and four days,” he said. He served time at the “Hanoi Hilton” POW camp and other encampments throughout the country. 

Over the course of the nearly seven years, he missed world events such as the moon landing and family celebrations.

“My parents never got anything from me for the first three years and I never got anything from them for the first three and a half years,” he said. “I think their first letter from me was a letter in April or May of 1969. The first thing I got from them was Christmas or New Years in 1969. It was a birthday card dated from August.”

That card contained a Polaroid picture of his older sister with a ring on her left hand standing next to a man he had never met, holding a baby he didn’t know anything about. 

“That’s how I found out I was an uncle,” he said. 

With the death of Ho Chi Minh in 1969 torture sessions became much more rare and said he only experienced torture twice. 

Regaining freedom

The Paris Peace Accords in January 1973 brought about the release of 591 POWs in February and March 1973. Ray having been one of the longest serving POWs was in the first group of 100 released and was on the first plane of POWs back to the United States.

His classmates including Robert Roundtree and future Conroe mayor Toby Powell arranged a large celebration for his homecoming to Conroe.

“It was so heartwarming to have Toby and Robert and all the other supporters work together on this,” he said. “It was a beautiful thing and I think it meant a lot to my mom and dad as well.”

Ray continued to serve in the Air Force until December 1990. He went on to work for the Texas A&M Foundation before retirement. He now lives in Brownsburo, Texas west of Tyler. 

For more information on the event, visit the Heritage Museum’s Facebook page.Â