Sybil Elizabeth Stockdale (; November 25, 1924 – October 10, 2015) was an American campaigner for families of Americans missing in South East Asia.
Sybil was the founder and first national coordinator of the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia, a nonprofit organization that worked on behalf of American Vietnam-era Missing in Action and Prisoner of War Families. In her capacity as national coordinator for the League, she also served as its liaison to the White House and the Department of Defense. She is the only wife of an active-duty officer ever to have been so honored. She held an undergraduate degree from Mount Holyoke College, and a master's degree in education from Stanford University. Jim and Sybil Stockdale had four sons: Jim, Sid, Stanford and Taylor.
The League
When Stockdale's husband James was shot down in 1965 over North Vietnam, the U.S. government had a "keep-quiet" policy, asking relatives of POWs to not raise a fuss about mistreatment of prisoners.
Later life
On May 10, 2008, Sybil Stockdale attended a christening ceremony at Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine, for , the 30th , and the 56th ship of the class. Four Medal of Honor recipients and seven former prisoners of war attended the ceremony that marked a milestone in construction of the 9,200-ton ship named for her late husband. She died at SHARP Hospital in Coronado, California on October 10, 2015, from Parkinson's disease, at the age of 90.
Works
Sybil Stockdale co-wrote a memoir with her husband James (who also wrote a number of books on his own). In Love and War: the Story of a Family's Ordeal and Sacrifice During the Vietnam War