The League of Wives

by Heath Hardage Lee

  But in 1971, the Watergate scandal had not yet happened. The wives were more than curious to see what Nixon’s next move would be regarding the war and their husbands’ fates.

  * * *

  In September, Sybil, Jane, and many other POW and MIA wives and families returned to Washington for the second annual League conference, held at the Statler Hilton. Every September at the League convention, elections would be held for the new League national coordinator and board chair. For the 1971–72 year, the League had elected a new national coordinator, Evie Grubb, from Petersburg, Virginia. Carole Hanson served as the League’s board chair.

  Evie was tenacious and had a bulldog manner about her. Not everyone liked her, but she was a hard worker and got the job done.38 Carole was extremely tall and looked like a fashion model, with a diplomatic manner that played well in the press. Her hope for the League? “We are probably the only organization in the country that is trying to put itself out of business” by bringing home the POWs and accounting for the missing men.39 Only then could the League finally close its doors.

  Sybil was in town to testify before Zablocki’s congressional committee for a second time. This year, she noticed that her troops were restless. “There was seething unrest among the POW/MIA Families with some feeling that we should become a political rather than humanitarian organization.” A political action committee was established, and Henry Kissinger was soon informed “about the possibility of a revolt against the Administration by our Organization.”40

  The Nixon administration was conducting its own high-wire act, negotiating with both the families and the North Vietnamese in Paris. They knew they couldn’t afford to blow it with either group. The 1972 election was at stake. This time, the administration knew it had better send a high-level official to the League’s banquet to placate the ladies—or suffer the political consequences. Even in an election year, LBJ would never have shown up.

  Richard Nixon did show up. Unlike his predecessor, he knew he needed to be there.

  Sybil recorded Nixon’s words from that evening in her diary: “I have considered the problem of obtaining the release of our POWs and missing in action as being one that has Presidential priority. I can assure you that every negotiating channel—and now I say something here that I am sure all of you will understand—including many private channels that have not yet been disclosed, are being pursued.”41

  In his closing remarks, the president gave his word that he would continue working hard to end the war, get the POWs home and the MIAs accounted for, and gave credit where credit was due—to the women who surrounded him that night.

  “I am just so proud of how great you have been and I am not going to let you down.”42

  * * *

  The newly elected League leaders, Evie and Carole, were tireless in keeping up the League work that Sybil, Louise, Jane, and the others had begun. Carole vividly remembered, “As we held our board meetings in Washington, D.C., we all would ‘walk the halls of Congress’ at least once a month, spreading the word about our husbands and the length of time they had been incarcerated.” The MIA wife emphasized the instructive role that the wives were still playing even in 1971: “We were, in fact, educating Congress in regards to this issue. Most did not know that there was no list provided by the North Vietnamese and very little mail received. Their lack of knowledge was frustrating, but slowly, congressmen and senators began to listen to us. At least, some of them.”43 Carole also instituted a hugely popular “Don’t Let Them Be Forgotten” POW/MIA bumper sticker campaign that, like the POW/MIA bracelets, helped raise awareness for the movement and for the League.44

  That same autumn of 1971, Helene Knapp was hard at work with her “Silent Nights” Christmas seals campaign. Three million seals, designed by Colorado Springs artist John Manson, a friend of Helene’s, had been sold by early December. The POW/MIA office on East Kiowa Street was flooded with hundreds of orders waiting to be filled.

  The seal featured white letters on a blue background, with the words SILENT NIGHTS and LEST WE FORGET: 1964–1971. The prisoner of war featured on the stamp was Lieutenant Commander Richard Allen Stratton. He was pictured sitting alone on a bench in solitary confinement, looking up at a “Christmas Star.” Helene remembered, “To use today’s vernacular, it went viral!”45 This striking image and message ultimately generated $30,000, all of which was donated to the National League.46

  Though the League’s charter deemed it a humanitarian group, the formation of a political action committee within its ranks had changed the dynamics of the organization—and some of its members. Sybil herself noted the impact of this internal PAC with satisfaction and the savvy of an experienced political operator: “It didn’t do any harm at all to have a radical fringe group as part of our organization.” When some of the more outspoken wives asked Sybil what she thought of them picketing the White House, she told them it was their decision. “It didn’t hurt to let the White House know our loyalty was wearing thin.”47

  Jane, too, was now willing to push the Nixon administration. In a letter to Phyllis on National League stationery, she urged League members to send a “barrage of mail to the President and to Congress during the Christmas season … to emphasize the importance of the prisoner of war–missing in action issue.” She was becoming more and more impatient for resolution. Instead of sending letters to the North Vietnamese, the wives were now sending pleas on behalf of their husbands to their own government.

  At the bottom of the holiday appeal, Jane added:

  “This has got to be the New Year we’ve all been waiting for.”48

  Sixteen

  IS PEACE AT HAND?

  NEW YEAR’S 1972 CAME and went. Champagne glasses were emptied. Confetti and party hats lay crumpled on the floor. The ball dropped in Times Square. But still the POWs remained POWs. The MIAs stayed unaccounted for. Jane’s wish that this year would be the year the men finally returned home already seemed like wishful thinking.

  Although Sybil was no longer the coordinator of the League, she remained on the board and acted as a League watchdog on the POW/MIA issue. Though she was a Nixon supporter, the welfare of Jim and the other American prisoners and missing was her top priority. When Nixon neglected to mention the POW/MIA issue on a national telecast with Dan Rather in January of 1972, it was Sybil who called him out—by sending a telegram directly to Rather, pointing out the omission.

  General Hughes, Nixon’s chief military assistant, took Sybil to task for the Rather telegram. He was now going to get the Haig treatment from Sybil. “He didn’t own me, and he better get that straight.”1 When he dared to tell Sybil, “I only have 28 days left on this job, and I’m going to see to it that nothing goes wrong,” Sybil had the perfect comeback. “I said I wished I could know I only had 28 days left as a POW wife!”2 Hughes later called and apologized, even offering Sybil a ride to D.C. on his government plane. She was still so angry with him, she declined the offer and took a commercial flight instead. No one could say the League’s founder was in the pocket of the Nixon government.

  After the League’s January board meeting, Bonnie Singleton was given the task of gathering statements from congressional candidates regarding their stand on the POW/MIA issue. Sallie Stratton recalled that, despite POW/MIA “family dissatisfaction with the results of the current Vietnamization policy … the League as a unified body gave a qualified endorsement of our President’s peace plan.”3 Mainstream members were on board with Nixon. But the League’s “radical fringe group,” as Sybil called it, was not on the same wavelength.

  In early February, Jack Anderson, a popular Washington Post columnist, reported that President Nixon “has made overtures to Hanoi through every possible channel to find out who is being held and to negotiate for their release.” As he had promised the ladies of the League at their banquet the previous fall, every lead was being followed and the prisoner release was a priority for the president. Henry Kissinger continued his negotiations, both public and private, in P
aris, but progress was excruciatingly slow.

  The National League was beginning to fracture, despite strong efforts by Carole Hanson and Evie Grubb to keep the group on a unified track. Dallas MIA wife and League board member Sallie Stratton recalled that League “families were just as split” as the country on the war.4 Though many of the women felt that Nixon was doing the best he could, everyone was weary of war and the constant obstacles thrown up by the North Vietnamese negotiators in Paris. As a result, by early February of 1972, “the families at home were … as splintered as a broken windshield.”5

  Some of the League’s best-spoken and most dedicated activists had left the League to join a more political group: POW/MIA Families for Immediate Release. Between 350 and 450 POW/MIA family members who had been part of the National League split off from the group and formed their own organization. Like the League, the group established a Washington office.6 POW wife Valerie Kushner, for one, was ready to push harder and yell louder to get her husband, Captain Hal Kushner, an Army flight surgeon, back. After five years of being a single parent and a tireless activist, she was done with the humanitarian approach of the League. Valerie not only joined POW/MIA Families for Immediate Release, but she also switched her political allegiance. The former League member seconded George McGovern’s presidential nomination at the Democratic Convention, then hit the campaign trail to stump for her candidate.7 Highly competent, independent, and articulate, Valerie would be missed by many of the League wives. “She was a spitfire,” Kathleen Johnson recalled fondly.8

  Louise Mulligan had left the League the previous May, when the organization refused to poll its members regarding whether or not to pressure the administration for withdrawal from Vietnam. Louise felt strongly at this point that “the leadership was no longer representative of the wishes of its members.”9 She had come close to the end of her rope. Her nerves were frayed, and her physician implored her to take a break. While she did not join POW/MIA Families for Immediate Release or stump for McGovern, she withdrew from League activities at this point. “The phone was ringing twenty hours a day. I had the phone company take the ringers off for my mental health.”10

  “After I left the League I did some interviews on my own and that’s when I started using the word ‘expendable.’ Such as, ‘If President Nixon continues to withdraw our troops from Vietnam, with no commitment for the release of our prisoners, he will be the first President who has labeled our men as expendable.’ That’s how frustrated I was!!!”11 She had put her heart and soul into the fight, but, like Sybil, this prominent East Coast organizer and activist had reached the limit of what she could endure in terms of the daily grind of League activities. She desperately needed a break.

  * * *

  Although League members were becoming more divided on the home front, they still rallied together as Americans abroad. The latest group that planned to fly over to Paris in February of 1972 included three POW/MIA wives: Phyllis, Kathleen, and Sharon White. Conrad and Carole Mikulic, a wealthy couple supportive of the group’s efforts, and the League’s lawyer, Charlie Havens, went with them. This time, the group decided, a new approach was required.12 It was time to focus more on individual diplomacy and personal connections. Phyllis was “convinced that the time for the large and dramatic trip is past. In order to enter into substantive talks our delegations must be small and relatively quiet.”13

  The POW letter-writing campaigns like Write Hanoi had been formidable weapons and had provided the women with the leverage they needed to gain appointments at the North Vietnamese embassies in Paris and Stockholm, but, as time wore on, the letters began garnering some negative publicity for the Americans. The staff at the suburban post office in Choisy-le-Roi, site of the North Vietnamese delegation’s headquarters, was overwhelmed by the enormous volume of letters that continued to be sent, pleading for the American POWs’ release. U.S. news sources claimed that the North Vietnamese were now routinely rejecting the letters. (The North Vietnamese vehemently denied this.) The embassy spokesman instead accused the Americans of racism because they showed “more concern for a few hundred Americans than for hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese war victims.”14

  The League delegation arrived in Paris on February 10. On the eleventh, Phyllis, along with Charlie, Sharon, and Kathleen (now on her third trip to Paris), headed for Versailles, the site of the Paris World Assembly for the Peace and Independence of the Indochinese Peoples, on February 11–13. They hoped to be able to meet personally with representatives of the North Vietnamese government, the Viet Cong, and the Pathet Lao to plead for the men’s release. To their dismay, conference organizers were informed that they could not be seated unless they identified themselves with the antiwar groups. This the League reps were not willing to do. “We said we could not speak for the League that way,” reported Phyllis later. Though the League had been forced to work often with antiwar groups, the still nonpolitical group refused to ally directly with their strange bedfellows of the past.

  However, Phyllis, Charlie, Kathleen, Sharon, and the Mikulecs all found out that the side conversations and personal chats they had in the lobby were well worth their time. “In the two and one-half hours of conversation that we had in the lobby we achieved more and had more varied contacts than if we had actually been seated,” Phyllis wrote.15

  One on one, some of the North Vietnamese representatives were kind and understanding. Kathleen had warm memories of an empathetic Vietnamese man who had been a teacher before the war. He was one of the delegates representing the Viet Cong. When she explained her situation as an MIA wife seeking any information she could find about her husband, Bruce, he responded that “as one human being to another, I will do everything in my power to learn about your husband.” The delegate understood her pain all too well: he had not seen or heard from his own wife and children for many years.16 Kathleen would never know whether her new friend was able to keep his promise.

  The group then returned to Paris and attempted to visit the Vietnamese embassy on the Left Bank. Phyllis was told to call the next week. She did this repeatedly, to no avail. Reporters from UPI explained that the Communist representatives would probably never see Phyllis or anyone in the League entourage, for three reasons: the Tet Offensive, worries about Nixon’s upcoming trip to China, and the cancellation of the Paris peace talks by American diplomats.17

  Despite some progress with North Vietnamese individuals, the wall of the larger Communist government had risen yet again between the North Vietnamese and the American wives of the prisoners and missing. Phyllis wrote a letter in French from her home base at the InterContinental Hotel and dropped it in the mail slot of the North Vietnamese delegate general, Xuan Thuy. In this letter, Phyllis clearly tried to separate herself and the League from the Nixon administration. Her attempts to focus on the humanitarian issue—the POWs and MIAs—are clear:

  “I am in Paris at the direction of my organization, the National League of Families. I represent all the families with men who are prisoners or missing in your country. No one wants peace more than the prisoners’ families.” Phyllis hoped the emphasis on family and peace, rather than policy, would grab the delegate general’s attention.18

  * * *

  The lesson Sybil Stockdale had learned so early on after Jim’s shoot-down, that there was no substitute for a personal visit, would also serve Phyllis well. On February 18, the night before she was supposed to leave to return home, she finally got the call she had been hoping for.

  French Communist reporter Madeleine Riffaud returned Phyllis’s calls from earlier in the week. Could she come over and see Phyllis right now? Phyllis was already in bed, but she immediately agreed, throwing her clothes on and dashing down to the hotel bar for their hastily arranged rendezvous She was not going to miss her chance to meet with Riffaud, who had met with Paul and interviewed him just a few months after his shoot-down in 1966.

  Riffaud spoke no English, but Phyllis’s excellent French allowed her to communicate easily with h
er. Phyllis didn’t let Riffaud’s Communist views stand in the way of obtaining information about Paul, either. She had dealt with many others like her before. Speaking with Riffaud was a breakthrough for Phyllis: the POW wife found that the French Communist reporter was much more open and less dogmatic than the American members of COLIAFAM. Bringing awareness to Paul’s plight and ultimately getting him home was what mattered, and she was determined to speak to anyone who had information about him, no matter their politics.

  Kathleen’s photo of Phyllis and Riffaud from their evening chat in Paris shows the two young women seated with their heads close together.19 Phyllis is blond and fair and looks like the all-American cheerleader. Riffaud looks quintessentially French, her dark hair in a long braid, sporting sleek leather pants and a skinny ribbed turtleneck. The women look like chic friends who know each other well. They could be meeting at a café to discuss the latest film by Claude Lelouch, or the futuristic fashions of André Courrèges.

  Instead, the women’s conversation was about life and death (and not in the abstract, à la existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre). Phyllis was trying yet again to establish a lifeline of communication to bring Paul home. She had learned that the only way to approach the Communists was as a humanitarian. Any association with the U.S. government was suspect. In her meeting with Riffaud, Phyllis “emphasized that our League was not sponsored by President Nixon and his administration and that we were asking the same questions of everyone who might help our men.” The women on the trip were simply wives who wanted to get their husbands home safely.20 It was the same message Phyllis had conveyed in French to Xuan Thuy earlier in the trip.