Losing Chuck, Finding Sallie: The Thirty-Six Year Odyssey of a Wife Whose Husband Was MIA in Vietnam

Sallie Stratton thought she knew what she was getting into when she married a military man–a life of following him wherever he would go. What she hadn’t counted on was that the day would come that she would not only be unable to follow him, she wouldn’t even be able to find him–he had gone missing in Vietnam. It would be 7 years before his presumptive death was made, 28 years before his remains were recovered and another 2 years before she brought him home. In those years when Sallie lost Chuck, she found herself, coming into her own, from a mother and homemaker to an activist, a student, a career woman and an adventurer.

After her husband’s plane crashed in Laos during the Vietnam War, Sallie Stratton was convinced he was still alive and a prisoner of war. As years went by, she struggled with how she and her three young sons, living in Dallas, could move forward without leaving Chuck behind. As emotionally powerful a story ever written about the families of the missing and unaccounted-for in Vietnam, Sallie’s journey ultimately takes her on a path of her own choosing: A way forward without forgetting her past.
Dave Tarrant, Enterprise Writer for the Dallas Morning News