Evelyn Grubb

Evelyn Fowler Grubb (August 9, 1931 – December 28, 2005) was the wife of an American Vietnam War Air Force pilot who became a prisoner of war, she was also a co-founder and then later served as the national coordinator of the National League of Families, a nonprofit organization that worked on behalf of Vietnam-era Missing in Action (MIA) and Prisoner of War (POW) Families. Grubb also oversaw the creation of the famous "You Are Not Forgotten" POW/MIA flag that still flies in front of all U.S. Post Offices, many firehouses and police stations, all major U.S. Military installations as well as most veterans organization chapters in the United States. She received a master's degree in education from Penn State in 1954. and after frustrations with the U.S. government withholding information on the status of her husband and other POW and MIA soldiers and pilots, as well as the Pentagon's practice of pressuring affected families not to speak publicly about the status of their captured or missing loved ones, Evelyn Grubb co-founded the National League of Families with Air Force POW wife Mary Crowe, also living in Hampton at the time, and with Sybil Stockdale, a Navy pilot's wife living in Coronado, California, whose husband was also a POW.

Another major impetus for starting the organization was that Grubb's combat casualty benefits, as well as those of many other POW and MIA wives, were delayed due to a Pentagon policy of waiting to confirm that U.S. soldiers and pilots who had become POWs or MIAs were not deserters, which was causing POW and MIA families great financial hardship at the time.

Foreword by Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who met with Grubb many times during her tenure as the Leagues National Coordinator, wrote the foreword to the book.

Film Adaptation

"Fruits of Peace" Evelyn Grubb’s story and legacy are further explored in the 2019 documentary film "Fruits of Peace," https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8991758/?ref_=fn_t_1 which chronicles an extraordinary journey of reconciliation between her family and Du Pham, a former North Vietnamese Army officer. Du served in the anti-aircraft unit C4, which shot down U.S. Air Force pilot Wilmer Newlin (Newk) Grubb in 1966. Believing Grubb had survived the war and been released during Operation Homecoming in 1973, Du traveled to the United States in 2010 to search for him, at significant personal cost. The price of a plane ticket was equivalent to a year’s salary in Vietnam, yet Du undertook the journey seeking not only to reconnect with family, but also to make peace with a former enemy he assumed had lived. While searching for Grubb in rural Pennsylvania, Du learned for the first time that Grubb had died in captivity during the war. Guided by his former commanding officer, Du went on to visit Grubb’s grave at Arlington National Cemetery. The film, produced by Napkin Sketch Productions, LLC, https://www.napkinsketchproductions.com/fruitsofpeace, Directed by Kevyn Settle, documents this deeply human encounter and examines themes central to Grubb’s legacy, including the duty to remember, and the possibility of reconciliation across generations shaped by war.