After the Hero’s Welcome: A POW Wife’s Story of the Battle Against a New Enemy

"As an American asked to serve, I was prepared to fight, to be wounded, to be captured and even prepared to die, but I was not prepared to be abandoned. It is that one American is not worth the effort to be found, we, as Americans, have lost."

These are the words of Captain Eugene "Red" McDaniel, who for six years was prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. For three of those years, he was listed "missing in action." During those tumultuous years, his wife Dorothy McDaniel clung to her faith, knowing that he was still alive.

It was her fight to find information on her POW husband, and his subsequent release from a North Vietnam prison that prompted them both to fight to have the United States government conduct search and rescue missions for prisoners they believed were still being held.

In this 20th anniversary edition of After the Hero's Welcome, read the story that shows the war didn't end for either Dorothy or her husband when he was released. The war on behalf of the many POWs still in North Vietnam prisons was just getting started.

Dorothy Howard is the wife of Eugene Red McDaniel, a naval officer who would spend six years as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Dorothy taught English in the Virginia Beach public schools. During Red’s last tour of military service, Director of Navy/Marine Corps Liaison to the U.S. House of Representatives, Dorothy served as Press Secretary to Congressman Charlie Dougherty (R-PA).