My POW Bracelet

I have had a very special experience this week. When I was in high school in the late 1960's, the Viet Nam war was going on. It was well known that there were many POW's. Some organization put the names of POW's on bracelets and sold them for $5. I ordered one and wore mine faithfully from the 10th grade until 1973 when on TV my Mom, my Aunt Pat and I saw a list of POW's as they were coming home from their captivity and we saw some coming down the steps of an airplane. We saw his name, so we knew my POW was home. I tried back in the 70's to write to him and maybe I did but never heard a reply. OK, still with me? The beginning of this week my friend William went to dinner at his friend's house and one of the reasons he was there was so their high school daughter could interview him about the 60's and what he remembered about the Viet Nam war. It made me think, "What would I say if someone ask me those questions?" Of course my first thought was that POW bracelet that I wore and I prayed for him. I went to my jewelry box to find it and a light went off! Why have I not tried to find him now that we are in this computer world? So I first went to Google and right away information came up about him. He was forced to eject over North Vietnam on May 15th, 1967, and was taken as a Prisoner of War. After spending 2,120 days in captivity, he was released during Operation Homecoming on May 4th 1973. He suffered many injuries during the torture and malnutrition. He retired from the AF in 1981. He has been married for 55 years, has 2 children and 4 grandchildren. Next I went to Facebook to see if I could find him and there were 129 Ben Pollard's. But I found the picture above and by this time I knew his age and family info so I wrote to him via FB asking him if he was the POW on my bracelet. He sent me a brief message back saying "Yes, I am". I wrote him back and told him my story. Today on Thanksgiving Day I received a lovely email from him. I will mail him the bracelet. This was a gift to hear from him after all of these years. God is so good!

In one of the articles I read on line was a quote: "There's no such thing as a bad day when you have a knob on the inside of the door." CDR, Paul Galanti, USN (ret)

Count your blessings!