Eleanor Ardel Vietti

Eleanor Ardel Vietti (November 5, 1927 – disappeared May 30, 1962) was an American physician and missionary. She worked at the Buôn Ma Thuột leper colony where she was taken as a prisoner of war (POW) on May 30, 1962. She was America’s first woman POW in Vietnam. She is currently the only American woman unaccounted for from the Vietnam War.

Biography Vietti was born in Fort Worth, Texas and had a twin sister, Teresa J. Vietti and a younger brother, Victor. Vietti and her sister were both interested in science and medicine early on. The family lived in Bogota, Colombia until she was around fourteen. Vietti then contracted a bad strep infection and had surgery in Houston, Texas. She worked in Buôn Ma Thuột at a Christian and Missionary Alliance leper colony. There was a high rate of leprosy among the Montagnard people and Vietti both treated those with leprosy and worked to prevent the disease. She made house calls to people in the villages.

Disappearance In April 1962, Vietti came back to the United States and visited with her family in Houston and St. Louis. were kidnapped by 12 Viet Cong guerillas. Vietti's ankle was injured, so it was reported that she was not tied up by the soldiers and was limping. A captured Viet Cong soldier told interrogators later in 1962 that Vietti was treating the Viet Cong wounded.

It was believed that she was being moved from village to village and was still believed alive in 1965. A report of a white woman asking for a Bible in a village came through in 1967. Reports of seeing Vietti and the other two missionaries among the Montagnard villages continued into the 1970s.

Legacy In 1998, Maggie O'Kane reported about Vietti and her capture on a radio special called The Only Woman Left Behind. In 2008, Nyack College honored her and other alumni who were lost in Vietnam, adding their names to a special stone bench on campus.