I want to share an important anniversary with you that has personal significance to me. Today, January 23, 2013 is the fortieth anniversary of the cease-fire in Vietnam.

On this day in 1973 I was a senior (6th former) at South Kent School in Connecticut and as I was walking down the hallway in the dorm a faculty member, Henry Milton, raced out of his door, excitedly grabbed me and said, “Come in here, you’ve got to see this!” In his apartment the television was on and President Nixon was giving a news conference and announcing that a cease-fire had been arranged, that American troops were being withdrawn and that American Prisoners of War would be released in a matter of weeks. It was a surreal moment, and one that I thought back to many times in the following months and years. It was like a new starting point for the rest of my life; someone had thrown a switch and the old black and white image was suddenly technicolor.

I had last seen my father in the spring of 1964 when he left San Diego aboard the USS Oriskany with his fighter squadron (VF-51). I was in the fourth grade. So today, January 23rd, will always have special meaning to me. —Sid Stockdale

I never lost faith in the end of the story, I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.

Oh, that’s easy, the optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart. Stockdale then added: This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end — which you can never afford to lose — with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.