Eleanor and Stephen Harris

On an October Day in 1967, Eleanor VanBuskirk Harris had a terrible premonition at her home at 87 Boston Rock Road. She was staring at a photograph of the US Navy ship on which her son, Lt. Cdr. Stephen Harris, was about to deploy. The photo went hazy, and she watched as five enemy ships floated into view and surrounded her son’s vessel. Coming out of her reverie, she felt frightened, but told no one about her vision.

Three months later, it all came true. Stephen, a graduate of Melrose High and Harvard, worked for the Navy as a cryptologist on board the USS Pueblo, a surveillance ship that listened in on North Korean radio chatter. On January 23rd, 1968, after a two-hour chase, it was captured by a small flotilla of North Korean Navy vessels. Below decks, Harris and his men tried desperately to burn the many classified documents they had on board, but could not finish the job in time.

The 82 sailors of the USS Pueblo became POWs, and for the next eleven months would be subjected to frequent beatings, interrogations, and a diet of turnips. Harris would survive those months through constant prayer, alone and, when possible, with his cellmates.

Back in Melrose, Eleanor also prayed—and she wrote. As one of Melrose’s most charismatic and dedicated teachers, she knew how to motivate people. With the nation’s attention riveted on Vietnam and domestic turmoil, she wrote to every member of the Senate to remind them of her missing son and his crewmates. After one of her letters was read on a national newscast, she received a call from the State Department requesting that she stop, as her supporters had inundated the phones and mailrooms of Washington.

Her diligence paid off. On December 23rd, 1968, the North Korean government allowed their prisoners to leave. Stephen and Eleanor were reunited a few days later in San Diego. At first, Eleanor did not recognize her son. He had lost 50 pounds, and was so weak that he had to rely on a wheelchair.

Weeks spent back in Melrose restored Stephen’s health. But his ordeal was not yet over. In April he faced a Navy tribunal, which recommended that he and Captain Lloyd Bucher be court-martialed for allowing classified documents to fall into enemy hands. Navy Secretary John H. Chafee overruled the tribunal, saying that the men had already been punished enough.

While Stephen was reinstated, any hopes of advancement had been dashed. Still, as he would tell many audiences afterwards, his misfortune had only served to strengthen his Christian faith. A few years later, he would tell his story in the book “My Anchor Held.” His mother would also write a memoir about that awful year, titled “The Ship that Never Returned.”

The USS Pueblo never did return, and has never been decommissioned. It is now a museum run by the North Korean government in Pyongyang. Eleanor died in 2011, at age 105. Stephen died on May 18, 2020, at age 82.