In 1957, he graduated from the Air Command and Staff College at Otis Air Force Base, in Massachusetts. He flew 101 combat missions in the Korean War, earning the nickname “Black Panther” (the symbol was even painted on to his flight helmet). He also served in the Vietnam War, flying seventy-eight combat missions. James’s biggest Air Force claim to fame during the war was his steady command of the Operation Bolo MiG sweep, which destroyed seven Communist MiG-21s—the highest total kill of any mission during that war.11
By 1970, James was a legend. The hulking former football tackle had gravitas and the respect of his peers, both black and white. But there was one more battleground where he would have to prove himself, one loaded with potential minefields. This time, a reporter of the era noted, “the battleground is public opinion, and no one is more at home there than Chappie James.”12
A staunch Nixon supporter, James gave no quarter to antiwar protesters, peace groups, or draft dodgers. The general’s response to those who opposed the American government? “And to those who say they’ll change the government or burn it down, I say ‘like hell you will.’”13
James would become a powerful and useful ally of the National League families. But his entry into his new position and into the League infrastructure was not without friction. Sybil and the West Coast wives had already thrashed the government’s Washington Road Show reps in March of 1969. When they met with Henkin and James in the spring of 1970, at a country club in San Diego, relations between the POW/MIA families and the government were still mistrustful and volatile. Sybil recalled how the Navy wives from Coronado, the Air Force wives from Apple Valley in the Mojave Desert, and the Marine wives from El Toro in Orange County all gathered to hear the latest report from Washington. This time there was not even a pretense of politesse.
“Dan and Chappy [sic] had gotten up and finished telling us all how everything was okay and pretty soon one Air Force wife got up and she said something like; I’ve been in this situation for 4 years and haven’t done anything and so on. She took a glass that she had—it was like a martini glass and she threw it against the wall and smashed it and left the room.” Sybil observed: “They were really rattled because by then we had become extremely outspoken.”14
Fortunately for James, most of the League members immediately liked him. He was a fighter pilot, like their husbands. He had seen repeated combat in Vietnam as well as in the previous two American wars. He was an inspirational speaker and could be a huge asset to the POW/MIA cause. League board member Sallie Stratton was a fan: “He was so supportive, so wonderful and genuine. He really cared and listened and was more forthcoming on information than most government staff.”15 The general did receive criticism from some of the wives at the outset of his new job for favoring the Air Force and for neglecting to mention the MIAs and POWs held outside of North Vietnam: those thought to be in captive in South Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and the People’s Republic of China. Henry Kissinger took James to task for this omission; it did not happen again.16
Even a towering Air Force brigadier general still had to fall in line behind the civilian leaders of this fight—the women, with Sybil at the helm.
* * *
Ross Perot also continued his efforts to support the League. On June 4, Speaker of the House John McCormack was featured in a televised address inaugurating Perot’s prisoner-of-war display at the U.S. Capitol. The diorama (which looked like something a visitor would see in the Museum of Natural History in the 1960s or ’70s) was designed to shock. At the center of the exhibit were two lifelike figures representing the American POWs. Historian H. Bruce Franklin later described it: “One sits in the corner of a bare cell, staring bleakly at an empty bowl and chopsticks on which a huge cockroach is perched. On the floor are other cockroaches and a large rat. The other figure lies in a bamboo cage, ankles shackled.” Replicas of this display would soon pop up at state capitol buildings all over the United States.17 Eventually such dioramas would become a common sight at shopping centers throughout America.18 The words “POW” and “MIA” were finally becoming part of the American vernacular.
* * *
Senator Bob Dole continued to watch the POW/MIA issue carefully, and he soon saw another opportunity for the cause. Dole and Phyllis Galanti had been in contact often. He was impressed with Phyllis, her businesslike manner and, most of all, the influence she had among her peers. Like Phyllis, Connie, Judi, Sybil, and many others, the young senator had also been thinking about Sweden’s stance as a neutral country. He decided to appeal directly to Sweden’s prime minister, Olof Palme, suggesting the relocation of American POWs from Vietnam to his country.
Sweden had a long history of neutrality during wartime. In 1834, King Gustav began this long tradition by royal proclamation. From this time on, the Swedish refused to take sides in times of conflict. During World War II, the Scandinavian country simultaneously harbored both Nazis and Nazi refugees. After the war, Sweden opted to continue its tradition of noninvolvement.
Over the postwar years, anti-American feeling grew in Sweden to the point that LBJ recalled the American ambassador to Sweden in 1968. The United States did not have an ambassadorial presence in Sweden for the following fifteen months. President Nixon decided to change tack, sending U.S. ambassador Jerome H. Holland (only the second African American to be chosen as a U.S. ambassador) to Sweden in April of 1970 to fill this gap.19
Because of its neutral stance, Sweden was the only Western nation that recognized the North Vietnamese Communist government. While Prime Minister Palme was visiting Washington in June of 1970, Senator Dole sent him a telegram suggesting that “the Swedish Government, in accordance with the 1949 Geneva Convention, offer to intern within Sweden, United States personnel held prisoners of war by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam until agreement can be reached on the release of all the prisoners. Internment within Sweden would assure these Americans of the treatment to which they are entitled by the law of nations and concepts of civilized society.”20
Palme, in an attempt to cultivate good relations with the United States, flew to D.C. to give a talk at the National Press Club on Monday, June 8. After his talk, thirteen National League members, led by Sybil, met with Palme at the Mayflower Hotel. The ladies presented the prime minister with a list of POWs and MIAs in Southeast Asia. Palme accepted the list. Sybil knew she had to take advantage of this opportunity, so she arranged a press conference, using the occasion “as a vehicle to press the Swedes for help in the press.”21 On the surface, things finally seemed to be moving in the right direction. Heartened by Dole’s suggestion and Palme’s willingness to meet with League representatives, Phyllis wrote excitedly to the senator:
“Thank you so very much for sending me a copy of the wire you sent Prime Minister Olof Palme of Sweden during his recent visit to the United States. I was very pleased at your suggestion that American Prisoners of War be interned in Sweden. It is a very novel solution, and one which I think should be pursued. I have my passport all ready and could easily make a trip to Sweden!”22
The seed had been planted, but a Sweden trip for Phyllis was still far from certain. She had more work to do to make this idea a reality. They needed currency, something to bargain with. Coming to Sweden empty-handed was not going to produce an audience with the North Vietnamese. Senator Dole was trying his best to help them, but the POW/MIA situation was just one of many items on the Nixon administration’s Vietnam priority list. Phyllis, accordingly, switched into high gear, with her good friends Connie and Judi as her wingwomen. This was one opportunity that she was not going to let slip through her fingers.
* * *
On June 17, 1970, Phyllis arrived home from her job at Reynolds Metals Company. It had been a long and depressing day. She was painfully aware that today was the fourth anniversary of Paul’s capture by the North Vietnamese. If her life had gone as planned, she probably would have been home like Judi and Connie, caring for a baby or even a young toddler, waiting for her husband to get home from
his own job. Instead her life revolved around her job, her POW activism, and her friends. She was becoming more and more self-assured and independent. A few weeks before, she had done something she never imagined she could do: she gave an impassioned speech about her husband and his perilous situation. She had been a featured speaker at a POW rally in Richmond, along with Jeff Grubb, the son of Evie Grubb, from Petersburg, and her MIA husband, Newk.
A recently released POW, Major Norris Overly, had spoken at that same rally. Overly had helped nurse POW John McCain back to health and had witnessed firsthand the brutal torture going on at the Hanoi Hilton, where he and Paul Galanti were both incarcerated. By Overly’s own admission, the Richmond POW rally was a “fizzle.”23
Summer had arrived in Richmond, in all its sticky, humid glory. Children were out of school, playing outside, enjoying the sunny weather, splashing happily at the pool with their parents and families. But this was not what Phyllis saw. What she saw instead was the years slipping by, and fleeting images of phantom children she and Paul might have had by then. They might never arrive, she mused, if the war didn’t end soon. Although she rarely pitied herself or thought Why me? she was becoming increasingly frustrated. Not depressed, but angry.
The long day did bring one bright spot she had not expected.
There was a letter from Paul waiting for her when she went out to get her mail. Her heart pounded as she opened it to find that he was alive and well, despite being imprisoned in the Hanoi Hilton. It “couldn’t have come at a better time,” but the bearer of the letter was not a member of her own government. It did not arrive through official channels. It was brought instead from members of COLIAFAM who recently visited North Vietnam.24 Like Jane, Sybil, Louise, and so many others, Phyllis would work all sides of the political realm to obtain communication with her imprisoned husband.
She continued to work for Reynolds in Richmond. They had been flexible with her work schedule, giving her large chunks of time off to pursue her POW/MIA activism. Her close friends Judi and Connie and their families had become like her own family. They were all part of the security net she had woven to keep her sanity intact. Phyllis was an introvert, quiet and self-effacing. But Paul’s situation had forced her to be out and about, to be social.
She was the very definition of a military wife: calm, reserved, and diplomatic. Having grown up in a military family herself, she knew the rules of the game in a way that some military wives did not. She innately avoided conflict, and the frustration she was experiencing almost drove her mad. She could no longer tolerate the situation as it was. She knew she was going to have to do something bold and unexpected to make herself heard on behalf of those, like Paul, whose voices been silenced. The personality of shy, retiring Phyllis was transforming itself from introvert to extrovert in order to battle the enemy.
* * *
In September, a local businessman gave the Virginia Beach POW/MIA wives an empty prefab building near the Virginia Beach–Norfolk Expressway at 500 First Colonial Road to use for their POW/MIA volunteer efforts. Dot McDaniel remembered that, on September 17, “we opened our headquarters with a big red and white banner reading ‘Don’t Let Them Be Forgotten!’ Now we would have a place for our volunteers to work. We could combine our assorted POW/MIA files and mailing lists, and use our headquarters as a backdrop when we kicked off our big campaign to send the delegation to Paris.”25
That same week, a peace group and the Black Panthers had both brought letters back from Hanoi.26 In October, Jane would meet with pacifist Quakers at the American Friends Service Committee headquarters. The group would give the women advice on the North Vietnamese embassies in Paris and Sweden—possible diplomatic channels with the POWs.27 While Jane and many of her League friends would continue to work both sides of the political aisle to communicate with their POW husbands and to help account for the missing men, the Navy was realizing more and more how insidious COLIAFAM really was. On April 6, Jane and other POW wives received a letter from the vice admiral of the Navy cautioning the families about working with COLIAFAM. “I reiterate my previously expressed attitude on organizations such as the Committee of Liaison. The action of the North Vietnamese in dealing through such groups, rather than at any official government level, is a propaganda ploy designed to promote the credibility of those who oppose the United States position in Vietnam. Such actions perpetrated at your expense on such an obviously humanitarian issue speaks poorly of those involved.” However, the admiral stopped short of disallowing mail from dissident sources: “We will take no action which might impede the flow of mail from your loved ones.” Since the government had nothing to offer regarding communications with the POWs, how could it forbid it coming from outside groups?28
The offices at 500 First Colonial became an oasis for these wives, a place to meet, plan, and work for their burgeoning cause. Jane and her other POW/MIA wife friends, like Janie and Dot, found comfort and purpose in their escalating involvement with the movement. Instead of working out of their bedrooms and on their kitchen tables, the ladies had a “real” office to use. Jane and Jerry’s son Jerry III remembered that this period was when his mother finally “got her gumption back.”29 That fall Jane was so busy she didn’t have time to brood. Her diary entries consequently became much more like business memos—shorter and more of a daily journal than the ruminations of prior years. Her language was more direct and confident. Questions were now directed toward the government and the military. She didn’t second-guess her instincts now. In early October, she attended the first National League convention in Washington and was elected vice chair of the League board.30 After the convention, she worked hard with Dot, Janie, and the other Virginia Beach POW/MIA families to raise money to send a League-sponsored delegation to the Paris peace talks. And all the while, she continued to work with Bob Boroughs, writing her letters to Jerry.31
In October, the League launched “Operation We Care” at its headquarters, with the local press covering the event. The campaign volunteers wrote petitions on behalf of the POWs to the North Vietnamese and circulated them everywhere in the local community: at grocery stores and shopping centers, in parking lots, and on street corners. You couldn’t escape these Virginia Beach POW/MIA wives even if you tried.32
* * *
That same fall of 1970, Sybil decided to move to Washington, D.C., to be closer to the action. She had only one free move with the Navy, but as League board chair, Sybil convinced herself that she could help Jim and the POWs more if she lived in the nation’s capital. She could become more of an “insider” this way, she reasoned. Stan also needed vision therapy, and she thought Washington might have better doctors. The older boys, Jim and Sid, were off at college and boarding school. Sybil hired a young woman they knew from Coronado named Kitty Collins to come along and be the younger boys’ live-in nanny.33
Sybil’s good friend from Coronado and fellow POW wife Patsy Crayton also decided to move to D.C. to help in the League office. Patsy was young and had no children at home to care for. Sybil offered to move Patsy’s furniture with hers to Washington. To Patsy, this sounded like a great idea and an adventure. She could help her husband and enjoy some time in D.C. while supporting Sybil. A win-win, she thought as she packed her bags.34
As Sybil and the younger boys waved a tearful goodbye to 547 A Avenue and its rose-covered walls, she wondered, was she really making the right move, for the right reasons? The move to an unfamiliar place, with young children and little support, soon became draining to Sybil, physically and emotionally. The debates between League members about organizational policy, though necessary, set her nerves on edge.35
By October, the League had moved to a larger office on K Street in downtown D.C. Public and governmental support for the group was more forthcoming: a red “Bat Phone” was installed with a direct line to Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s national security adviser. Patsy, who was working in the League office, said, only half-jokingly, “The White House probably bugged everything!”36 The
ladies also gained a regular audience with Kissinger, meeting with him every two months about the POW/MIA situation.37 Like the Virginia Beach wives, the D.C. wives found comfort in being with others in their situation. They also consolidated mailing lists, made copies, fielded outside calls from POW/MIA family members and the press, and organized League board meetings, which took place very six weeks. And drank lots and lots of coffee.
Patsy found herself in charge of planning the League trip to Europe that Jane Denton and others were fundraising for. League members, 174 of them, would fly to Paris together and then fan out into thirteen different European countries to raise awareness and try to gain audiences with the North Vietnamese representatives at their embassies and consultates. At the end of the trip, the group would meet up in Geneva again. The trip would not take place until the next summer, but it required most of Patsy’s time and attention during the fall of 1970.38
Unlike Patsy and the younger, more unencumbered wives, Sybil felt trapped and depressed in D.C. She would often go home after dropping the boys at school and crawl back into bed, debilitated with anxiety. Thank God for Kitty, she often thought. She wasn’t sure how she would be able to function alone. “Moving had wiped out my last drops of energy and willpower. I’d get up and force myself to see you boys off to school,” she wrote in her diary, addressing her sons, “forcing an optimism and cheerfulness I was far from feeling. As soon as you were out the door, I’d go back up to bed, covering my head with a pillow, trying to shut the world out of my life.” When Stan and Taylor came home in the afternoon, Sybil would pull it together and force herself to become the smiling, happy mother they all wanted her to be.39
The League of Wives Page 21
