1636 POW Families Still Do Not Know

WASHINGTON - Feb. 9, 2015 - PRLog -- Washington, DC (February 12, 2015) - For 50 years, the Grubb family has existed in a limbo of anguish. Almost no information is known about their father’s circumstances involving his USAF jet being shot down during Vietnam and his imprisonment.  It was only recently, after receiving a letter from the former Vietnamese soldiers from other side, inviting them to Vietnam, that the Grubbs began to think they could finally ask questions directly to people who actually know. “It dredges up the past in a lot of ways, not all of which are good, but getting the honest truth on the table is important,” said Jeffrey Grubb, oldest son of the four brothers. “These are is the men who have possibly led to the killing of my father. Do I want to deal with them? That’s an honest response I had. The thinking part of me is, of course, saying I want to deal with them. These are events that happened 50 years ago, and they are offering a view into a period of my life that has always been a mystery,” Jeffrey added.

The cost of a plane ticket to the United States was the
equivalent to the annual salary of an average
Vietnamese, but It was the price Du Pham gladly paid
in August of 2010 to visit the country, and the brother he had fought
against during the Vietnam War. For Du Pham, this trip
was about more than reconciling with family. It was also
a chance to make peace with a former enemy, by
visiting with US Air Force Colonel Wilmer Newlin
Grubb, an American POW pilot who had been shot down and held in captivity by Du Pham’s North Vietnamese Army anti-aircraft unit almost 50 years ago. It wasn’t until Du Pham began his search, however, that he learned that Col. Grubb had died while in captivity and never made it home to America.

January 26, 1966, Col. Grubb's plane was shot down in Vietnam while on a reconnaissance mission. Weeks later, pictures of him being held at gunpoint were released and published in print media around the world. In some of the pictures, a Vietnamese nurse is attending to what appears to be a superficial wound on his knee. He left behind a pregnant wife and three sons--Jeffrey, Roland, and Stephen; his youngest son, Roy, was born 182 days after his capture. Told to remain home and await more information, Evelyn Grubb, his wife, endured the long arduous feeling which she coined, “The limbo of anguish.” However, she refused to sit idly any longer. She banded together with other families of the imprisoned and missing, mostly wives, and brought the conversation onto the international stage. Evelyn Grubb became a founding member and eventually Coordinator of the National League of POW/MIA Families. It was during her leadership at the League that the symbolic POW/MIA flag, entitled “You Are Not Forgotten” was chartered.  Operation Homecoming, the release of many of the American POWs, on February 12, 1973, is a date the four brothers have never forgotten.  “We thought in the back of our minds, maybe, it’s all wrong, maybe he’s going to be the next one coming off the plane,” said Stephen Grubb. “For so many years, we thought of that time and thought it would be us. We wanted to be the ones running across the tarmac,“ Jeff added. Unfortunately, despite all of Evelyn Grubb’s and the League’s efforts, Col. Grubb did not come home alive.

Operation Homecoming was an important point for many families of POWs.   Watch and listen to the sons talk about what that time period meant for them,www.vimeo.com/119088163



Watch and listen to the sons talk about receiving Du Pham’s letter, and accepting the invitation to meet those responsible for shooting down and capturing their father. Their remarkable story is summarized in a short video posted at the following website: www.vimeo.com/117869047

Fruits of Peace is a documentary film produced by Napkin Sketch Productions, who are traveling with the Grubb family this April to document their last best chance at finding out why their father never came home.

Kickstarter campaign has been opened to raise funds for travel and production expenses for the family and filmmakers, www.kickstarter.com/projects/978086187/fruits-of-peace

Filmmaker Kevyn Settle and members of the Grubb family are available for interviews before they travel to Vietnam in April 2015.

Contact:   Kevyn Settle

202.352.3877­

Kevyn@napkinsketchproductions.com