Graduated from West Point in the class of 1964, 10th in a class of 564.
A Rhodes Scholar in 1965.
Awarded two Silver Stars, Purple Heart.
Commander of Company B, 1st Battalion, 8th Cavalry, 1st Air Cavalry Division.
Killed in a helicopter crash with Major General George W.Casey.

Panel 09W Line 128 on Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall.

Major John Alexander Hottell III (1942-70)(West Point 1964)(0xford MFA 1968) graduated 10th in his class at West Point and was a Rhodes Scholar at University of Oxford, Magdalen College, 1965-68, majoring in philosophy, economics and political science. While at Oxford he was twice the British national collegiate diving champion, 1967-68, setting a new high point scoring record for the event of 72.37 (218 in the U.S.) in 1968. He was also on the rugby and boxing teams and played guitar in a popular seven piece band. At West Point he was on the diving and boxing teams and played rugby. He played lead guitar in a small dance combo. In high school in Germany, he was president of the student body, president of the National Honor Society, U.S. Overseas All-Europe champion in the mile run and an All-Europe football (soccer) player.

He was commander of Co. B, First Battalion, Eighth Cavalry, 1st Air Cavalry Division in Vietnam and later selected as his aide by Major General George W. Casey, Sr. (1922-70), commander of the 1st Cavalry Division. He received two Silver Stars for extraordinary heroism in combat. On July 7, 1970, he died along with General Casey and five other men in a helicopter crash in Vietnam en route to Cam Ranh Bay. He is buried in the West Point Cemetery.

Each year at West Point a memorial award of an engraved saber and scabbard is presented in his name to the graduating cadet with the highest standing in selected history courses. West Point Library's special collections has ten binders of journals written by Alex. In 2010, a faculty chair for character development was endowed at West Point in Alex's name by Ross Perot who was a presidential candidate in 1992.

Through his descent from Lt. Colonel Nathaniel Pope (c1610-60), of Virginia, Alex was a third cousin six generations removed to George Washington and also a cousin to Gen. George Patton. Had he survived Vietnam, like those two cousins he would have eventually become a general in the army.

He married in 1966, Linda Ann Brown (UTn. 1974), daughter of Finis Ewing (1905-56) and Hattie Mai Welch Brown (1908-2000), of St. Bethlehem, Tenn. She was a team coordinator for the Tennessee Department of Children's Services in Knoxville, Tn.

See John F. Murray, Fallen Warriors, The West Point Class of 1964 (Fuquay-Varina, N.C., 1996), 176-189 (contains a picture of Major Hottell); The Courier-Journal, July 22, 1970, August 30, 1970, G2; The American Oxonian, January, 1971, 47-49; The New York Times, March 3, 1971, 43; The Washington Evening Star, March 3, 1971, 1; The Retired Officer, June, 1971, 27; Ward Just, "West Point Rendezvous, Notes on the 'Vietnam Class,'" The Atlantic Monthly (Jan. 1975); http://www.west-point.org/taps/, type 1964. Gen. George W. Casey, Jr. (b.1948) was commander of American troops in Iraq in 2006 and was Army Chief of Staff. Alex was also an Eagle Scout in Troop 109, Louisville. See James Houston Barr III, Lt. Colonel Nathaniel Pope, c1610-1660, of Virginia, Ancestor of Washington, Governors and Legislators, History of His Descendants (Louisville, Ky. 2018), 226.
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This self-penned obituary was written by Alex and was published in the New York Times:
I am writing my own obituary for several reasons, and I hope none of them are too trite.

First, I would like to spare my friends, who may happen to read this, the usual clichés about being a good soldier. They were all kind enough to me and I not enough to them.

Second, I would not want to be a party to perpetuation of an image that is harmful and inaccurate: "glory" is the most meaningless of concepts, and I feel that in some cases it is doubly damaging.

And thirdly, I am quite simply the last authority on my own death.

I loved the Army: it reared me, it nurtured me, and it gave me the most satisfying years of my life. Thanks to it I have lived an entire lifetime in 26 years. It is only fitting that I should die in its service. We all have but one death to spend, and insofar as it can have any meaning it finds it in the service of comrades-in-arms.

And yet, I deny that I died FOR anything – not my Country, not my Army, not my fellow man, none of these things. I LIVED for these things, and the manner in which I chose to do it involved the very real chance that I would die in the execution of my duties.

I knew this, and accepted it, but my love for West Point and the Army was great enough – and the promise that I would someday be able to serve all the ideals that meant anything to me through it was great enough – for me to accept this possibility as a part of a price which must be paid for all things of great value. If there is nothing worth dying for – in this sense – there is nothing worth living for.

The Army let me live in Japan, Germany, and England with experiences in all of these places that others only dream about. I have skied in the Alps, killed a scorpion in my tent camping in Turkey, climbed Mount Fuji, visited the ruins of Athens, Ephesus, and Rome, seen the town of Gordium where another Alexander challenged his destiny, gone to the Opera in Munich, plays in the West End of London, seen the Oxford- Cambridge rugby match, gone for pub crawls through the Cotswolds, seen the night-life in Hamburg, danced to the Rolling Stones, and earned a master's degree in a foreign university.

I have known what it is like to be married to a fine and wonderful woman and to love her beyond bearing with the sure knowledge that she loves me; I have commanded a company and been a father, priest, income-tax advisor, confessor, and judge for 200 men at one time; I have played college football and rugby, won the British National Diving Championship two years in a row, boxed for Oxford against Cambridge only to be knocked out in the first round and played handball to distraction – and all of these sports I loved, I learned at West Point. They gave me hours of intense happiness.

I have been an exchange student at the German Military Academy, and gone to the German Jumpmaster School, I have made thirty parachute jumps from everything from a balloon in England to a jet at Fort Bragg. I have written an article that was published in Army magazine, and I have studied philosophy.

I have experienced all these things because I was in the Army and because I was an Army brat. The Army is my life, it is such a part of what I was that what happened is the logical outcome of the life I lived.

I never knew what it is to fail, I never knew what it is to be too old or too tired to do anything. I lived a full life in the Army, and it has exacted the price. It is only just.