Sybil soon realized that the government wanted her help—but only if she was a safe three thousand miles away from the nation’s capital. Her presence in D.C. was apparently too close for comfort for government staffers who worried that she might become too emotional if they dealt with her in close quarters. In addition, the cost of living in Washington was crushing. She agonized over how she would be able to manage it all alone.40 Sybil soon withdrew from her day-to-day League duties. Despite being worn out and sick at heart, she continued to serve as the League’s board chair. Still, one can’t help hearing the Rolling Stones’ 1966 lyric “Here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown” when imagining Sybil spiraling into depression—a delayed reaction, perhaps, to circumstances that would have knocked out those with less fortitude years before.
* * *
Karen Butler heard through the wives’ grapevine about Sybil’s depression and flew to D.C. in October, along with another friend of Sybil’s, Margie Kopfman. Karen remembered that when she arrived, Sybil was in bed, medicated with one or possibly two drugs. Karen, a trained nurse, recognized one of them as Mellaril, commonly prescribed at the time for psychosis.41
Sybil confessed to her friends that she was terrified and anxious—so much so that she had not paid her bills that month. Karen and Margie immediately took over, with Margie writing checks and having Sybil sign them. With her friend’s affairs now in order, Karen insisted that Sybil get psychiatric help immediately, and she did. Sybil recalled, “I decided I didn’t care whether it was weak or not. I couldn’t go on feeling the way I did.”42
A month later, Jane noticed that Sybil was on edge at the League’s November board meeting. After the group adjourned, the board members all went out to dinner. Jane recalled, “Sybil—desperately angry, militant, and in the mood for revenge—wants at gov’t just to ‘even the score’ … said she was tired of being constructive.”43 Who could blame her? After the massive amounts of work Sybil and the women had done, she still felt like an outsider in Washington. And she was fighting another, internal battle to keep calm and carry on in an alien environment.
Sybil knew that the League had made huge strides, and she was proud of what they had been able to accomplish despite so much opposition. But years of battles, big and small, with the government and the military had pushed her to the brink. After reading an article in Time magazine that the Vietnam War could last for five more years, she had decided that was her limit. “Mentally, I thought well, okay, I can hold out for 5 years if I have to. It is very interesting because as soon as that five-year mark past [sic] I went right down into a deep clinical depression.”44 Thankfully, Sybil found the right psychiatrist. Dr. Robert Moran helped her see that she was not weak for seeking mental health care—she was smart. He pointed out to her that most anyone would have been depressed and anxious in her situation. He called her “Stockdale” and made her laugh and listened to her problems. He even, inappropriately, flirted with her a bit. Just seeing him regularly, talking things out, and getting her mind off her problems boosted her morale.45
The Son Tay raid, on November 21, buoyed her spirits even more. Secretary of Defense Laird had ordered American Green Berets to raid the Son Tay prison camp, in North Vietnam, in hopes of liberating its prisoners. Their intel proved dated: the prisoners had already been moved to another camp. But the effort showed the enemy that the United States was serious about rescuing its soldiers held in violation of the Geneva Conventions. “Although the Son Tay raiders did not free any prisoners, the U.S. government had publicly demonstrated to Hanoi and to an increasingly skeptical public that America had not forgotten her captured servicemen.” When the American POWs finally heard of the rescue attempt, failed though it was, their morale, like Sybil’s, soared.46
* * *
In December, Sybil was invited by Admiral Moorer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to his home for a fancy Christmas party. In anticipation of the event, she had bought a red velvet evening gown that she could not wait to wear. (All her life, Sybil loved dressing up.) Another obstacle loomed unexpectedly, however.
Sybil’s OB-GYN, Dr. William Cooper, had noticed some cellular changes that could indicate cervical cancer. He sent her to the hospital, without delay, for more testing. “Instead of wearing the red velvet dress on December 17, I was wearing a hospital gown at Sibley Memorial Hospital and having further tests made.” The powerful board chair of the National League had been so terrified all fall, she decided she had used up her anxiety. She also credited Dr. Cooper and Dr. Moran for keeping her calm during the testing phase.47 While she did not have cancer, her doctors recommended she have a hysterectomy, “to be on the safe side of the cancer threat.”48
While Sybil was wrapped in her hospital gown, a group of delegates from Colorado Springs was in Paris, demanding action on the POW/MIA issue. They had also wrapped up boxes of “presents” for the North Vietnamese: 125,000 letters to dump at their embassy door and other embassy doors all across the City of Light. The missives were all written by Colorado Springs and Pike’s Peak area residents and addressed to the North Vietnamese representatives in Paris. This letter campaign, like the one Phyllis had directed in the Richmond area, fell under the National “Write Hanoi” umbrella.
On December 16, the Colorado Springs for Prisoners of War group that was affiliated with the National League protested in front of the North Vietnamese embassy, in the Eighteenth Arrondissement, with the express intent of getting arrested. The four Springs picketers knew that, following the 1968 Paris student riots, any gathering of more than three on the streets of Paris was illegal. All the better, as they planned to embarrass the Communists in front of the world. On international television! A bespectacled, smiling Larry Ochs, vice mayor of Colorado Springs, carried a placard reading, MAI VAN BO WHY WON’T YOU SEE US? (Mai Van Bo was the North Vietnamese chief negotiator in Paris.)49
As John Herzog, the PR man for the group, recalled, the French gendarmes essentially winked at them. They let the American protesters do their thing and eventually asked them to disperse, but they did not arrest them. The Colorado Springs delegation got the international publicity they sought without spending a single minute in a French jail cell.50
* * *
By January of 1971, Sybil’s psychotherapy was beginning to pay off. Despite concerns about her physical health, her confidence and strength seemed to be returning. She and other representatives from the National League scheduled a meeting with Henry Kissinger. He had to cancel at the last minute. In his place he sent a young general, Alexander Haig, to meet with them.
When Sybil and other League members, including Jane Denton, Kathleen Johnson, and Andrea Rander, received word of the canceled meeting, Sybil recalled, “we were stunned with disappointment, which rapidly turned to anger. We were tired of seeing assistants to assistants. Weren’t our men important enough?” The wives almost canceled the meeting with Haig, but they decided to go and blow him up. When they arrived, Haig was ill-prepared for the ladies’ urgent questions about their husbands. The general announced that it would be another two months before the women could see Kissinger again. Sybil’s eyes narrowed and she hissed:
“We don’t want to wait two months to see Dr. Kissinger, General Haig. We want to see him in two days. We’ll still be here on Monday and if he cares about our men, he’ll somehow make the time to see us. We’re tired of being put off. Do you understand what we are saying? Are we communicating with you?” A nervous, sweaty Haig replied, “I can assure you, you are communicating with me very well—so well, in fact, that I have worked a hole in the pocket of my pants and my change has fallen out all over the floor!” With that, the tension broke. Having made their point and been assured of a Monday meeting with Kissinger, the ladies politely put their coats back on and left.
Kissinger promptly met with the POW/MIA wives the following Monday. With a smile, he asked what the ladies had done to rattle Haig so badly. He assured the women that Haig was so shaken by the meeting that he
had left the building that day to escape a second encounter. He then promised to be as honest and open as he could possibly be with them without compromising national security. But he painted a dark picture of the future.51
Kissinger was still making little progress toward peace with the Vietnamese, who continued their stonewalling tactics. He feared that the war might drag on indefinitely. Nixon’s top negotiator later recalled that the North Vietnamese “were cold-blooded bastards. They were manipulating us.” The lengthy negotiations were, in Kissinger’s view, deliberate and strategic; he would later state that the North Vietnamese had “tried to break our spirit, they tried to keep it [the war] going until we would make concessions.” He communicated the essence of this situation, though not any details, to the women that day.52
Down and discouraged, the entire group departed. The League members might be able to gain important meetings with top American government officials now and scare the hell out of Alexander Haig, but the North Vietnamese were still in control of their husbands’ fates.53
Fifteen
WRITE HANOI AND SILENT NIGHTS
ON JANUARY 31, 1971, the world watched as America’s space cowboys made yet another triumphant lunar landing. Astronaut Alan Shepard led the third successful landing on the moon with the Apollo 14 mission.1 It seemed as though almost anything was possible for the Americans—except ending the war in Vietnam. That same month, Phyllis had redoubled her efforts to raise POW/MIA awareness. Under the auspices of the National League’s “Write Hanoi” letter campaign, Phyllis and her volunteers kicked off a Richmond-based “Bring Paul Home” letter-writing campaign in January. This effort urged those from all over the state to write the North Vietnamese government in support of the tenets of the Geneva Conventions regarding prisoners of war.
Bring Paul Home letters from concerned Richmonders demanded proper food, shelter, and medical care for the POWs, mail privileges, and the free flow of information regarding both POW and MIAs. Form letters were made available all over the state through Richmond’s TV station WWBT and its Bring Paul Home letter-writing office. Judi, Connie, and Phyllis all worked there night and day with their dedicated volunteer office manager Gwen Mansini to manage the letter collection.2
Judi recalled that the Write Hanoi “office” was really a large trailer on the property of WWBT-TV, under the station’s tall antennas. WWBT had generously donated the space for the local POW/MIA effort. “We had three phones, large tables for desks, posters on the wall of Paul in jail, and American flags everywhere.” The women were surrounded by boxes of “Write Hanoi” materials, dozens of volunteers, and phones that never stopped ringing.3 On January 22, 1971, the campaign got a publicity boost when Ross Perot arrived in Richmond for a Write Hanoi luncheon at the Hotel John Marshall. Phyllis and the Texas maverick millionaire appeared together later that day on local TV.4
On February 12, shy Phyllis faced yet another test of her mettle. This time, she addressed the Virginia Senate in a televised press conference. This appearance would kick off a larger, area-wide effort for the Bring Paul Home campaign. The former housewife who just wanted to stay home instead spoke out forcefully on the POW/MIA issue, making a not so subtle jab at her own government during her speech: “Paul is a very patient, very easygoing person. But I know he must be wondering why the greatest country in the world can’t get him out of that rathole he’s been in for four and one half years.” While she was not advocating for early prisoner release, Phyllis was demanding that the world listen, that it rebuke the North Vietnamese for their inhumane treatment and force the Communists to improve the prisoners’ living conditions immediately.5
Richmonders and Virginians statewide responded in force to the appeal in ways they had not before. Schoolchildren, military veterans, firefighters, teachers, policemen, college students—everyone seemed to unite on this issue. Don’t stand by and let this happen, Phyllis and her friends pleaded. The women knew how concerned the North Vietnamese were about their public image. If they continued to chip away at this, one day, they reasoned, their defenses might finally be breached.6
Former POW Norris Overly was back in Richmond to speak with Phyllis on February 12 in front of the Virginia Senate. He saw a seismic shift in Richmonders’ attitudes since the June POW rally at the state capitol. “The difference that I noted is that there is more support by people who are not directly involved in the POW issue.” People like Judi, Connie, and their families who saw a need and responded to it. Overly pointed out that, unlike Virginia Beach, with its “colony of wives,” Richmond had only six men among the possible prisoners.7 Jane Denton, Janie Tschudy, Louise Mulligan, and others in Virginia Beach had a tight-knit group of women all in the same situation, with a military base at its core. But Phyllis had no family to support her, and few other military wives in her situation in her adopted city.
Instead, Phyllis got by with a little help from her friends.
The result was a truckload of 750,000 letters: 450,000 from Richmond and 300,000 from Northern Virginia.8 Now Phyllis, a former “shrinking violet,” and her allies had the currency they needed to bargain their way into the North Vietnamese embassy in Stockholm. They didn’t fight their way in like traditional soldiers—they wrote their way in. In the case of the POW/MIA wives, the pen would prove mightier than the sword.
* * *
Phyllis made her long-awaited trip to Stockholm on March 8, 1971, armed with an eighteen-wheeler truck—covered in WRITE HANOI bumper stickers—that contained 750,000 letters demanding the ultimate release of the POWs as a group and adherence to the tenets of the Geneva Convention in the meantime. Accompanying her was a diverse group of nine others, including Judi and Connie, who had left their children at home with their husbands.
As Judi later related, the team of supporters the women put together was carefully planned. “The choice of these people was imperative.” Phyllis’s colleague Cliff Ellison, personnel director at Reynolds Metals Company, was selected in large part because of his Swedish background: his parents were both Swedes, and he spoke the language fluently. His linguistic skills would be crucial in Stockholm. Gwen Mansini, the women’s dedicated office manager, was a skilled organizer who helped keep things running smoothly. Prominent Richmond businessman Joe Antonelli and local banker H. L. “Ted” Baynes signed on to show the support of the city’s business community for the POW issue. High school student Don Smith, head of the Young Republicans at his high school, rounded out the entourage. “We tried to get a cross section of the population involved,” noted Judi.9
But Phyllis’s most important allies came from the Richmond media.
WWBT-TV Channel 12 newscaster Ed McLaughlin and manager Jim Babb were Phyllis’s secret weapons. The media coverage they would generate and the injustices they would document were exactly what the POW/MIAs needed.10
The Richmond Write Hanoi delegation arrived on a cold, gray Tuesday afternoon. The Swedish press immediately mobbed the group: journalists from four newspapers and a television station and AP and UPI reporters all sought interviews. The next morning, March 10, the story was all over the news, and it was time to act. The group had set up their own appointments, and they met first with American ambassador Jerome Holland and his embassy staff.
While sympathetic and helpful to Phyllis and her entourage, Holland and his people had faced a steep uphill battle as they attempted to combat the Communist propaganda coming out of Hanoi. Most of the media in Sweden came from left-leaning sources that tended to paint the American soldiers in Vietnam as ruthless and combative warriors.11 The Write Hanoi delegates next had a fruitless meeting with the head of the International Red Cross. Judi remembered indignantly, “He was awful, definitely a Communist. He said, ‘We will not help you, period.’ He never even asked us to sit down!”12
Phyllis would later tell Frank Sieverts, deputy assistant secretary of state for POW/MIA matters—and member of the original “Washington Road Show” team at Miramar—that both the Red Cross and the Swedish gove
rnment were “non-committal” and that neither were willing to intervene much in POW affairs.13
The most important development of the day came from a spontaneous, unannounced visit to the North Vietnamese embassy. Phyllis, Ted, and Joe went there on foot and asked a Swedish woman working at the embassy for an appointment. This time, cordiality was tossed out the window. Phyllis sweetly explained to her, “If we are not granted an audience, then we would come back with all of the press and our 750,000 letters that we had with us.” Her gambit had the desired effect: Phyllis was told to call back that afternoon for an appointment.14
Phyllis kept calling the North Vietnamese embassy, but the staff refused to return her calls. She continued to slowly and calmly repeat what she would do if they refused to speak to her. The North Vietnamese representatives finally agreed to see her, accompanied by two men from her party. No other women from her party would be allowed into the embassy. “Women had absolutely no value” in that culture at that time, noted Judi.15 Phyllis prepared to meet with them the next day and spent a restless night in her hotel, worrying.
The next morning, Judi and Connie fussed over Phyllis and her outfit, advising her on what to wear. They all knew the power of image. This ensemble needed to be simple and unadorned, but it had to have some punch to it. That way, Phyllis could make a statement about her position, her loyalty, and her mission without having to say a word. The embassy had told her to leave her “Nixon propaganda” at home, as well as the letters—and the media.16
With her two best friends’ approval, Phyllis chose a simple navy-blue dress with tall boots and navy stockings. She wore no jewelry except for her wedding ring. But her Hermès silk scarf, a gift from Judi’s mother, sent a clear message: it was red, white, and blue.17 Judi and Connie nodded with satisfaction as Phyllis departed for her appointment: her friends knew her well enough to know that she would somehow get the job done. She had gotten further than they ever expected she would by boldly demanding an audience with the North Vietnamese, using her literal ton of letters as a bargaining chip.
The League of Wives Page 22