George Stanley McGovern, (born July 19, 1922) is an American politician of the Democratic Party who served as a U.S. Senator from South Dakota from 1963 to 1981. Prior to his election to the Senate, he served in the House of Representatives.
McGovern was the Democratic candidate in the 1972 Presidential election. He ran on a platform of opposition to the Vietnam War, but lost in a landslide to incumbent Richard Nixon. McGovern is currently serving as the United Nations Global Ambassador on hunger.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_McGovern
[edit] Early life and career McGovern was born in Avon in South Dakota and lived in nearby Mitchell, having moved there at the age of six. The son of a minister, he graduated from Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell. McGovern married Eleanor Stegeberg of Woonsocket on October 31, 1943. The two had met during a high school debate in which Eleanor and her sister Ila defeated McGovern and his partner. As the war approached, McGovern recalled later, he felt insecure about his own courage. A gym teacher once called him a "physical coward" for failing to vault a gymnastics horse. To prove himself, McGovern, who was afraid of heights, took flying lessons and got a pilot's license through the U.S. Government's Civilian Pilot Training Program. "Frankly, I was scared to death on that first solo flight," McGovern remembered. "But when I walked away from it, I had an enormous feeling of satisfaction that I had taken the thing off the ground and landed it without tearing the wings off."[1] He volunteered for the United States Army Air Forces during World War II and served as a B-24 Liberator bomber pilot in the Fifteenth Air Force, flying 35 missions over enemy territory from bases in North Africa and later Italy, often against heavy anti-aircraft artillery. McGovern was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for saving his crew by crash landing his damaged bomber on a small Mediterranean island. McGovern's wartime service is at the center of Stephen E. Ambrose's book The Wild Blue [2], which the author dedicated to McGovern's wife Eleanor.
From the very same link you sent to me...evidently you did not read far enough. Point is, he was considered a war hero too