LA PORTE CITY --- Margaret "Peg" Mullen, the La Porte City woman who grabbed national fame for her quest for the truth about her son's 1970 death in Vietnam, has died.

Mullen died Friday at the La Porte City Nursing and Rehab Center. She was 92.

Just last year, Mullen was honored by the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom with its "Strong Feisty Woman" award.

Michael Mullen's death was the subject of the 1970s bestseller and namesake TV movie "Friendly Fire." Peg Mullen and her husband, Gene, farmed outside La Porte City when Michael was killed in a "friendly fire" incident in Vietnam. He died in a foxhole in his sleep, hit by shrapnel during an errant U.S. artillery barrage.

After their son's death, the Mullens, who had three surviving children, took out half-page advertisements in the Des Moines Register with 700 crosses for each of the Iowans who had been killed in Vietnam at that time, asking how many more would die.

"I went into a rage," Peg Mullen said in a 2005 Courier interview. "What did it was the fact that he (Michael) was killed by friendly fire. That just drove me crazy. I knew he was dead. I just had a premonition. I could almost tell you the hour. And you just can't imagine the annoyances by the military."

She called former Iowa governor and then U.S. Sen. Harold Hughes to intervene on her behalf in her quest for information on her son's death.

The Mullens' anti-war stance and quest for information surrounding Michael's death spawned national publicity in the '70s. That included C.D.B. Bryan's bestselling book and a 1979 television movie starring Carol Burnett and Ned Beatty as the Mullens.

Gene Mullen died in 1986.

Peg Mullen authored her own book, "Unfriendly Fire," in 1995 and remained active on peace issues.

Funeral services for Peg Mullen will be 10:30 a.m. Wednesday at St. Mary of Mount Carmel Catholic Church in La Porte City with burial in the church cemetery.

Visitation will be 4 to 8 p.m. Tuesday Hagarty-Waychoff-Grarup Funeral Service on South Street in Waterloo. Memorials may be made to the Bosco System or the Iowa International Women's League for Peace and Freedom.