Memorial Day Read: Alexandria Author Taylor Kiland Co-Authors Unwavering

A Story of Service, Sacrifice, and the Women Who Changed History

Alexandria, VA — One of the best things about living in Alexandria is being surrounded by patriotic, talented, and deeply accomplished people quietly shaping the stories that define our country.

Author, editor, and ghostwriter Taylor Kiland is exactly that kind of person.

An Alexandria native, Kiland attended St. Agnes School (Class of ’85) and now, alongside her husband, is raising their daughter in Old Town. She holds a master’s degree in marketing communications from Northwestern University and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from University of Southern California.

A former naval officer and third-generation member of a Navy family, Kiland has written, co-authored, ghostwritten, or edited eighteen books throughout her career. Among them are three powerful works centered on America’s Vietnam POWs: Unwavering: The Wives Who Fought to Ensure No Man Is Left Behind, Lessons from the Hanoi Hilton: Six Characteristics of High-Performance Teams, and Open Doors: Vietnam POWs Thirty Years Later.

Her work has appeared in outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC Nightly News, CNN, C-SPAN, the Associated Press, and Proceedings from the Naval Institute, among many others.

The Women Behind the POW-MIA Movement

For Memorial Day, we are highlighting Unwavering: The Wives Who Fought to Ensure No Man Is Left Behind, co-authored by Kiland and Judy Silverstein Gray.

The book tells the true story of the military wives during the Vietnam War who defied strict military protocol and refused to stay silent while their husbands remained prisoners of war or missing in action.

Rather than quietly accepting government policy, these women organized, lobbied politicians, confronted the media, and forced the United States government to publicly address the plight of captured and missing servicemen.

For Kiland, preserving and elevating their story was deeply important.

“Most people do not know the origins of the iconic black-and-white POW-MIA flag that flies over every federal building, including every post office in this country,” Kiland explained. “You cannot drive five miles without seeing one.”

She notes that the flag was created by a small group of POW and MIA wives during the Vietnam War as part of a larger awareness campaign for their captive and missing husbands — men who remain the longest-held group of POWs in American history.

Another major awareness effort came through the POW bracelets that swept the nation during the war.

“Anyone who was of age during the Vietnam War remembers the bracelets,” Kiland said. “More than five million people wore them.”

Changing Military Policy Forever

The women featured in Unwavering did far more than create awareness campaigns — they fundamentally changed American military policy and public expectations surrounding prisoners of war and missing service members.

Prior to the Vietnam War, many MIAs were simply declared dead, with limited effort made to recover remains or fully account for the missing. The movement led by these wives helped transform that approach into the enduring military doctrine of “Leave No Man Behind.”

Today, the United States spends years — and millions of dollars — continuing recovery missions for missing personnel from conflicts spanning generations.

“And the search never stops,” Kiland said. “We have a handful of very determined wives and mothers who are responsible for the change in that policy.”

Currently we still have over 81,000 Americans that are still missing from World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and other conflicts, but they will not be forgotten.

The Women Who Refused to Stay Silent

The book highlights a remarkable grassroots movement led by women whose courage reshaped history:

• Sybil Stockdale — Widely considered the movement’s primary founder and organizer. Her husband, Navy Commander James Stockdale, was the highest-ranking naval POW in Vietnam. She openly defied military instructions to remain silent and gave interviews exposing prisoner mistreatment.
• Alice Stratton — A Massachusetts activist who challenged the State Department’s “keep quiet” policy regarding prisoners and missing servicemen.
• Mary Ann Mearns — Better known as Pat Mearns, she traveled extensively around the world raising awareness after her husband disappeared in 1966.
• Carole Hansen — Helped transform the wives’ support network into an organized international political movement.
• Andrea Rander — Helped coordinate advocacy efforts across all military branches.
• Marian Shelton — Spent decades demanding accountability for missing servicemen in Laos and refusing to allow their stories to disappear from public memory.

Continuing the Work of Remembrance

Like the women she writes about, Kiland has dedicated herself to ensuring that stories of sacrifice, courage, and service are not forgotten.

She is currently working on her next book, a memoir co-authored with Hal Kushner, an Army flight surgeon who was captured and held as a POW for five and a half years.

“Hal’s story is less well known,” Kiland said. “He was captured and held in South Vietnam — not the Hanoi Hilton — in jungle camps run by the Viet Cong, where the conditions were much, much worse and the death rate was much, much higher. He had 13 men die in his arms.”

Why These Stories Matter

The personal stories of individual heroes — and the families who fought for them — remain critically important because they remind us not only where we have been, but who we hope to be moving forward.

Books like Unwavering ensure that sacrifice is remembered, history is preserved, and the promise to leave no one behind is never forgotten.