Later Life
After returning from Vietnam and retiring, he was chairman of a civilian group called American Friends of Vietnam, demonstrating his personal commitment to the Vietnamese people.
He attended a reunion in Newark at the University of Delaware also attended by retired Marine Lt Gen. Robert T. Pepper, and Gen. Julian C. Smith in 1967. O’Daniel sent his alma mater a portrait given to him by Ngo Dinh Diem, the first president of South Vietnam. The Middletown Transcript recorded his last visit to Delaware on Nov 28 1971: “Lt. Gen. John W. "Iron Mike” O’Daniel, World War II hero, returned to Newark to settle the estate of his aunt Miss Etta J. Wilson.”
A 1945 oil portrait of General O’Daniel by Stanley Arthurs hangs in Alumni Hall at the University of Delaware.
He died in San Diego on March 27, 1975, survived by his wife Gretchen, a daughter Mrs. Ruth Snyder of Pacific Grove California, and four grandchildren. His first wife, Ruth died in 1965. His only son, John W. O’Daniel Jr., a paratrooper, was killed in action in World War II at Arnhem in 1944 while serving in the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division. A brother, J. Allison O’Daniel, was killed in an air crash while serving in World War I.
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“Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth, that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)