Captured by Love: Inspiring True Romance Stories from Vietnam POWs Spiral-Bound |

Lee Ellis is Founder and President of Leadership Freedom® LLC and FreedomStar Media®. He is an award-winning author, leadership coach, and expert presenter in the areas of leadership, teambuilding, and human performance. His past clients include Fortune 500 senior executives and C-Level leaders in telecommunications, healthcare, military, and other business sectors. Some of his media appearances include interviews on networks such as CNN, CBS This Morning, C-SPAN, ABC World News, Fox News Channel, plus hundreds of engagements in various industry sectors throughout the world.

Early in his career, Lee served as an Air Force fighter pilot flying fifty-three combat missions over North Vietnam. In 1967, he was shot down and held as a POW for more than five years in Hanoi and surrounding camps. For his wartime service, he was awarded two Silver Stars, the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star with Valor device, the Purple Heart, and POW Medal. Lee resumed his Air Force career, serving in leadership roles of increasing responsibility including command of a flying squadron and leadership development organizations before retiring as a colonel.

Lee has a BA in History and a MS in Counseling and Human Development. He is a graduate of the Armed Forces Staff College and the Air War College. He has authored or co-authored five books on leadership and career development. Lee’s last book entitled Leading with Honor®: Leadership Lessons from the Hanoi Hilton has received multiple awards since its release including Winner in the 2012 International Book Awards in the Business and Management Category, and selection on the 2013 U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Reading List. His last book is entitled "Engage with Honor: Building a Culture of Courageous Accountability", and his latest book is entitled "Leadership Behavior DNA: Discovering Natural Talents and Managing Differences."

Lee and his wife Mary reside in the Atlanta GA area and have four grown children and six grandchildren.

Greg Godek. Co-Author. Jay Leno joked about Greg Godek’s first book in his monologue: “There’s a new book called ‘1001 Ways to be Romantic.’ That’s an awful lot of ways! I mean, guys—if the first thousand ways don’t work…what are the chances she’s gonna stick around when you say, ‘Oh wait! One more!’?!” Appearances on “The Today Show” and articles in “The Sunday New York Times” and “Cosmo,” plus his record-breaking booksigning tour (two years aboard a custom RV, visiting 287 bookstores in 43 states) made Greg’s book a #1 bestseller, with three million copies sold.

Greg’s first dozen books were creative romps through romantic love. But his latest book, coauthored with Top Gun pilot and Vietnam POW Col. Lee Ellis, has taken his work into deeper and more profound waters. “With Captured by Love we had the unexpected insight that the same skills and beliefs that allowed our POWs to survive inhumane treatment and unspeakable tortures—over five to eight years—are the same skills and beliefs that are necessary for couples to create what we call ‘Happily Ever After Marriages’. I feel honored to have been given the opportunity to interview 20 couples and widows and widowers (between the ages of 78 and 94) who have lived extraordinary lives and have created some the strongest and happiest marriages I have come across in more than 40 years of relationship work.”

Greg’s guiding conviction is that love is an emotion, while romance is an action. “Without action, love is merely a nice idea.” Looking back on his life, career and passion, he observes that, “My life has pretty much been a living laboratory exploring and experiencing the joys and sorrows of couplehood.” Through the writing of Captured by Love, coauthors Greg and Lee were delighted to see a series of “Love Lessons” emerge organically from the love stories they were capturing for posterity.