Best Bracelet

In yesterday's Contra Costa Times is a story about Kathy Strong and James Leslie Morland. They have never met and it is unfortunately a pretty good bet that they never will. Kathy wears a POW bracelet with James' name on it. She has worn it since she first got it as a Christmas Stocking Stuffer in 1972. I do wonder what her "Santa" was like to put one of these in her stocking. Perhaps if more of us received this type of gift the world might be a little better? It does bring back memories of my own POW bracelet, the Vietnam War, my brother, the Vietnam Memorial, the current war and my other brother. All of them flow thru my brain like rocks in a rock polisher. Not smooth, not good, but noisy and loud and wanting them to stop, but afraid when they do and the silence sets in.

I was one of the lucky ones, I guess. I was able to send my bracelet home. My POW came home, I can't tell you much more than he lived in Texas and I sent the bracelet to him when I was notified that he came back. I never heard from him and I don't remember his name now and that is a shame. I made a promise to myself that I would always remember and I broke it somewhere along the way.

A couple of years ago while visting the Colonel and family we went into Washington, DC and saw the Vietnam Memorial for the first time. I did not expect to be so overwhelmed. It starts out as a small little piece of black marble and rises upwards until it is far about my head. The names brought tears to my eyes, I pictured young boys, dads, sons, brothers, lovers never coming home again. I was angry and I was amazed that the names of missing and dead went back to the 50's. The Colonel being the history nerd he is started telling me about how we had been there for so much longer than most of us think. We looked at that wall with lumps in our throats and spoke of Michael. How that war had killed him, but he had not died there. That men like him should be there, because they were just as dead because of things that happend there.

Then we walked over to the booths - there were three or four of them filled with stickers, badges, pins, names of the still missing. The POW/MIA flag flying over each of them. They were staffed by guys that looked like bikers for the most part and maybe they were. They also seemed a little damaged in that Vietnam Veteran kind of way, but they have vowed to stay there in one form or another until the last POW/MIA comes home from every war. I was confused, one of them explained to me that we still have POW/MIA's from WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam. I felt embarassed because I did not know.

I do not know a lot of things, but I do know that I am grateful and humbled by the Kathy Strongs of the world that keep the faith and hope that someday that bracelet can come off their wrist.