Sybil Stockdale

When an American soldier or pilot became a prisoner of war, his family in the United States suffered right along with him. For many, there was uncertainty of whether their loved one was alive or dead, as the North Vietnamese were not very forthcoming with their lists of prisoners. Families often waited for years to receive a letter from the POW, while the prisoner himself often received only one or two letters a year of the dozens that had been written to him.

Sybil Stockdale remembers what it was like for her and her children after her husband, Commander Jim Stockdale, a navy fighter pilot, was shot down in September 1965. Badly injured during the ejection from his airplane, he spent the next seven and one-half years in a prisoner-of-war camp in Hanoi. She describes how her world changed when she was...