What I Believe: Jon Camp

 13 comment(s)  
 E-mail Story
 Print Story
  Share

 digg it!
 Facebook
 del.icio.us
Seed Newsvine
Fark It
Reddit

Text Size: 

Tools Sponsor

By COLLEEN KENNEY / Lincoln Journal Star

His broken body with its broken neck lay in iced alcohol to bring down his temperature. He felt himself entering a haze he knew wasn’t visible to others in the Air Force hospital in Texas, where they’d flown him on a plane.

He was 19, a star Air Force Academy Cadet on track to becoming a pilot. He was dating the commandant’s daughter.

Christmas Day 1968, his dad was driving home to Lincoln from a family gathering in Kearney. His mom sat in the back. Jon was asleep in the front passenger seat when their car slipped on ice and hit an oncoming car.

[+]Enlarge

Jon Camp (Heidi Hoffman)

Jon Camp (Heidi Hoffman)

Related Media

Audio Slideshow: I Believe, Jon Camp

I Believe is a 7 day series featuring the beliefs of Lincoln locals. (Heidi Hoffman / JournalStar.com)...

Comments: 0

Rated:

His mom died instantly, his dad on New Year’s Eve. Jon was thrown out and awoke two weeks later, paralyzed.

From the haze, he heard a nurse tell someone in the hall: Please be quiet. There’s a young man dying in here.

“I felt myself slipping away.”

Today, he’s 58, a city councilman, a businessman who developed and owns much of the Haymarket, a man who’s learned to hide the weakness in his right side.

Why didn’t he die? Well, he says, because he was young and strong and he’d prayed to God to let him live, and because the military doctors were the best in the world. This was the Vietnam era, and those doctors had worked on many broken young men.

But there was another reason, one Camp believes made all the difference — something that happened before the crash.

Fewer than 10 people have ever heard this story, he says, probably because he was too embarrassed to tell it.

He’s back home in Lincoln for Thanksgiving 1968.

His parents have bought him a United Airlines ticket to return to the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. But he decides to take an Air Force plane out of Offutt to save them money.

The academy has a strict rule: If you fly back commercial and you’re late, that’s excusable. But if you take a military “hop” and are late, that’s an automatic 20 confinements to your room.

Jon doesn’t worry because he gets a seat on the first of six planes flying out that day to Colorado Springs. His parents see him take off on the tanker, and then cancel the airline reservation. But halfway to Colorado Springs, an engine goes out and the tanker returns to Offutt.

He gets on another plane. It takes off and returns. This happens six times before he finally arrives. He’s late.

The Christmas Ball arrives. The commandant’s daughter wants him to take her, but he’s confined to his room. He comes up with a plan: He’ll stuff his bed to make it look like he’s asleep.

He sneaks out.

The next morning, he wakes to a call.

Be in my office in five minutes! Get dressed!

Later, the commandant’s discipline board throws the book at him — everything, it seems, short of expulsion. He must march back and forth outside for hours.

Christmas break, his parents meet him at Offutt to take him home for a few days. Dead silence fills the car. Halfway to Lincoln, his dad finally speaks.

What happened?

I got caught.

More dead silence.

I’m going to quit.

That’s it for conversation.

An ice storm hits, and he spends a few days chipping away at the ice at their home near 37th and Washington streets, happy to avoid talking about what happened. But one evening, his dad calls him down to the basement, to the little corner he made into his den.

His voice is stern.

Jon, you realize that right now that there are young men dying in Vietnam for our country’s freedom, and you are attending the United States Air Force Academy. I tried to get appointed to West Point during World War II, and I didn’t get it. It’s such an honor for you to attend there, and you broke a rule — you voluntarily broke a rule, and you got caught. If you run from something this petty in your life, what are you going to do when something major hits you?

Good night.

That night is Christmas Eve. The next day, while Jon and his parents are visiting relatives, a favorite cousin corners him.

Did you tell your parents yet?

Yes. But I’m going back.

On the drive back home to Lincoln, their car slips on ice and hits an oncoming car, and two weeks later, a young man awakes to a new life.

Colleen Kenney is on leave. Reach her editors at 473-7306 or citydesk@journalstar.com.