Lee - The league of wives: the untold story of the women who took on the U.S. Government to bring their husbands home

PRESIDENT FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT surveyed the flat, sandy fields of North Island, on the Coronado peninsula, with an acquisitive eye. FDR, a former assistant secretary of the Navy, saw enormous potential in these jackrabbit-infested plains. Within a few weeks of his visit, the president issued an executive order clearing Coronado of its longtime Army presence and claiming the entire area for a new naval base. With war in the Pacific raging, the island would become a recognized cog in the militarys success during World War II.

Naval Amphibious Base Coronado was constructed on this barren spot in 1944, and Coronado was now the Navys training base, its social center, and its incubator for outstanding pilots and their families. They flocked to the peninsula like migrating swallows, seeking out nesting grounds.

With its Spanish-themed architecture, swaying palm trees, and beautiful stretches of beach, Coronado must have seemed like an exotic Shangri-la to its new inhabitants. As the Navys dominance grew, so did the tight-knit Navy community, which had its own unique rules and regulations. These rules created a military caste system whereby an officers rank translated directly to his wife and familys status in this community. The commanding officer and his wife were at the top of the military heap. The men and women knew their place within the system and obeyed orders, both at work and at play. The crisp military element soon formed an essential part of the peninsulas cultural fabric.

In contrast to the rigid Navy presence, well-heeled jet-setters seeking Coronados restorative climate made the town a destination for them: movie stars, politicians, even European royalty. Hollywood icons Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, and Katharine Hepburn flocked to the luxurious, red-turreted Hotel del Coronado to see and be seen. Or not Black eyes became all the rage there when the hotel became the retreat of choice for Hollywood actresses recovering from face-lifts.

The Del, as the hotel came to be known to locals, boasted its own resident ghost, as well as gigantic crown-shaped light fixtures designed by Wizard of Oz author L. Frank Baum, a frequent visitor to Coronado and the hotel in the 1920s. The formerly sleepy oceanfront town became a sun-drenched version of the Emerald City, with the Del as its palace and naval aviators crossing its skies in their F-8 fighter jets.

By the early 1960s, Coronado had plenty of Munchkins, too. Children ran rampant day and night all over A Avenue, where naval commander James Bond Stockdale, his wife, Sybil, and their four sonsJim Jr., Sid, Stanford, and Taylorlived. There were at least fifty-six kids living on the Stockdales block when the boys were small. One family that lived close by had twelve children. Their mother made daily grocery store runs to feed her brood and had a drinking fountain installed in their home.

The bridge across San Diego Bay that would connect the peninsula of Coronado to the city of San Diego in 1969 was not yet built. Coronado in this era was straight out of a Beach Boys song: a small, idyllic Southern California town that looked like a Hollywood film set.

No one yet knew that the biggest drama the island peninsula would see would not be of the cinematic variety. Instead it would be born of the unexpected consequences of the Vietnam Wara conflict that would bring death to the island and wreak havoc on the lives of the towns high-flying Coronado Navy pilots, their wives, and their children.

During the lengthy Vietnam conflict (19651973) and even earlier, the Communist North Vietnamese would capture hundreds of American military pilots from Coronado and from all across the country. These men would become prisoners of war (POWs) for years or, even worse, would disappear forever as missing in action (MIA). Their wives, who worked tirelessly to save them, were told by their own government to keep quiet and to stay in the shadows, out of the media spotlight, until their government could bring the men home.

After years of silence, the ladies decided this approach simply would not do.

Over time, these military wives would take matters into their own hands, forever changing the course of their husbands fates and American military culture. The story of these largely unknown heroines begins here in Coronado, with a reluctant sorority of women who would become more powerful and influential than they could ever have imagined.