Maureen Dunn, advocate for POW/MIA families

Maureen Dunn lost her husband on Feb. 14, 1968. She did not lose him the way thousands of other American military wives lost their husbands during the Vietnam War -- to death, clear and confirmed, acknowledged with a funeral and proved by a flag-draped casket. Her husband, Navy pilot Joseph Dunn Sr., was simply lost -- missing in action -- when his unarmed A-1 Skyraider was shot down over the South China Sea.

For years, she was neither a wife nor a widow. It was an experience shared by the hundreds of military families Dunn came to represent during decades of dogged advocacy in Washington and internationally.

Dunn, 72, died May 10 at a rehabilitation center in West Roxbury, Mass., said her son, Joseph Dunn II. She had cancer.

Dunn started her campaign in 1968, the year her husband disappeared, rallying a dedicated band of supporters to form the "Where Is Lt. Joe Dunn?" committee.

Over time, her campaign and similar ones across the country gained momentum. In 1970, when the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia was formed in Washington, Dunn was among the original members.

She helped lead demonstrations about the POW/MIA cause and met with ambassadors, presidents and other officials to lobby for support. She was credited with promoting the use of the now-iconic black-and-white POW/MIA flag.

Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1974, she expressed her anger at what she considered the insufficient public attention to the POW/MIA issue.

"Our problem," she said, "has been Watergated, Agnewed, Richardsoned, energy-crisised and Mideasted practically out of existence."

In 1995, she drew national attention when she confronted Robert McNamara, the former defense secretary and architect of the Vietnam War, at a presentation of his book "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam." "Mr. McNamara, you don't know who I am," she told him, according to a Washington Post account of the event at Harvard University. She recounted what she maintained was her husband's story -- how Joe's plane had sent distress signals after crashing in the Chinese waters, and how McNamara and other officials determined that a rescue attempt would not be "worth it" because of problems it might cause with China.

"I'm that guy's wife," she told McNamara, crying. "I have waited 25 years for someone to say, 'I am sorry.' " At first, The Post reported, McNamara said he did not remember the episode. Then he said: "If I said that, I'm not just sorry. I am horrified." It was former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, the Boston Herald reported, who told Dunn what he believed to be her husband's fate. "Maureen," he told her after a trip to China, "I feel they know what happened to Joe, but do I think you'll ever see him walk through the door again? No." In the early 1980s, Joe was declared presumed killed in action and was given a military funeral at Arlington National Cemetery.