Reflections and Lessons Learned from a POW Father

For the first time, Sid Stockdale, one of four Stockdale children, tells stories from his 8- year experience (from age 11 to 19) while his father was a POW in the Hanoi Hilton and his mother started The National League of Families of POWs and the Missing in Southeast Asia. Sid will discuss his experiences of these years of trauma in a new memoir, “A World Apart – Growing Up Stockdale During Vietnam.” 

Major themes include dealing with the loss of Sid's father emotionally and the long term uncertainty with him a POW; coping with his mother’s physical and emotional exhaustion and eventually her severe depression; coping with his brother Stan’s emotional blindness and its impact on his mother; coming to know the “Sid” that emerged at boarding school surrounded by a healthy and safe culture; the joy of his father’s release and return; the beauty of getting to know his father and witnessing the  strength, courage, and determination of both my parents who were an exceptional couple.

https://coronadotimes.com/news/2023/05/22/sid-stockdale-speaks-new-memoir-chronicles-a-familys-story-of-survival-love-and-grit/ 

 

 

                                                       

 

ABOUT SID STOCKDALE 

Sid Stockdale, class of 1973 is the son of distinguished military hero, James Bond Stockdale. Sid Stockdale was eleven years old when his father’s US Navy fighter jet was shot down over North Vietnam and he was held a POW in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” for the next seven years. Sid authored  a memoir, about his father and his time as a POW during Vietnam, titled A World Apart: Growing Up Stockdale During Vietnam. It wasn’t supposed to be a book.But when Sid Stockdale was sent a copy of his mom’s diary in 2016, a year after her passing, he started journaling. Once he started, he didn’t stop.

Sid was only eleven years old when his father, Vice Admiral James Stockdale, was shot down in his Navy fighter jet and captured in North Vietnam in 1965. Stockdale was held as a prisoner of war in the “Hanoi Hilton” for seven years, four of them in solitary confinement (two of them blind-folded) while his mom, Sybil, was left raise four boys and await his return.

The words in Sybil’s diary filled in the missing pieces of Sid’s memories, allowing him to reconcile a tumultuous childhood of nightmarish proportions with the strength and love of his family.