The casket of Medal of Honor recipient, retired Vice Adm. James B. Stockdale, is carried from the U.S. Naval Academy Chapel by the ceremonial guard Saturday in Annapolis, Md. Stockdale, one of the country's most decorated Vietnam War veterans and a one-time vice presidential candidate, was buried Saturday at the Naval Academy.

Annapolis, Md. ? Retired Navy Vice Adm. James Stockdale, one of the country’s most decorated Vietnam War veterans and a one-time vice presidential candidate, was buried Saturday at the Naval Academy.

About 500 people, including several Medal of Honor recipients and fellow former prisoners of war, attended the funeral for Stockdale, who died on July 5 at his home in Coronado, Calif. Stockdale, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, was 81.

The 12 honorary pall bearers included Arizona Sen. John McCain, also a Naval Academy graduate and POW during the Vietnam War, and Texas billionaire Ross Perot, the third-party presidential candidate who chose Stockdale as his running mate during his run for the White House in 1992.

Stockdale endured 7 1/2 years as a POW at North Vietnam’s infamous “Hanoi Hilton” prison and spent four of those years in solitary confinement.

He received the Medal of Honor in 1976 for his resistance, which included beating himself in the face with a wooden stool so he would be too disfigured for the North Vietnamese to display on television.

He retired from the military in 1979, one of the most highly decorated officers in U.S. Navy history, and became president of the Citadel, the military college in South Carolina. He left in 1981 to become a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford.

Stockdale is survived by his wife, four sons and eight grandchildren.