Vietnam War bracelets come full circle

In high school, Joleta McNelis was never far away from a man she had never met. She carried Lt. John Ensch in her heart — and on her wrist.

Aside from his name, the only thing McNelis knew about Ensch was the date his fighter jet was shot down over North Vietnam: 8-25-72. It was etched under his name on the metal bracelet she bought when she was 14.

FOR THE RECORD:
Vietnam War bracelets: An article in the Nov. 4 Section A about personal connections inspired by Vietnam-era POW/MIA bracelets said four antiwar protesters were killed by National Guardsmen at Kent State University in 1970. Two of the slain students were taking part in the protest; the two others were bystanders. —

“I prayed for him. But it wasn’t just prayers. I talked to John, imagining he could hear me: ‘I’m pulling for you, John. Be strong,’” McNelis said. “One night I got a checkerboard out, set it up on my bed and said, ‘OK, John, we’re going to play checkers now.’”

When McNelis went off to college, she boxed up the ephemera of youth and entrusted it to her mother. The items collected dust for more than 30 years, until her mother gave them back to her in February.

“It was like a time capsule,” said McNelis, now 52.

There were letters from friends. Middle school report cards, bead necklaces and a troll doll. A coffee mug with a yellow smiley face and a pin on which the same round face has a frown. “POWs Never Have a Nice Day,” it reads.

Tucked away underneath it all was the bracelet with Ensch’s name. Holding it again after so many years brought a flood of emotions.

“I had always wondered what happened to my guy,” McNelis said. “Who was he? Did he make it home? Did he have a family? Was he still alive? I had to find out.”

Just a decade ago, answering such questions would have taken persistence. Today all it took was an Internet search from her home in Gig Harbor, Wash. McNelis soon found her guy — and his e-mail address — in San Diego.

“Dear John,” she typed. “I never thought I would be so happy to write a Dear John letter…”

They were 1-ounce talismans of hope, slivers of engraved metal that became a bandage for a divided nation.

More than 5 million POW/MIA bracelets were sold for $2.50 to $3 apiece in the early 1970s. They transcended politics and were embraced by strange bedfellows. Nixon and McGovern. Bob Hope and Sonny and Cher. John Wayne and Dennis Hopper.

Hopper probably didn’t know that the organization behind the cultural icon was Los Angeles-based Voices in Vital America (VIVA), a conservative student movement formed in the 1960s to counteract campus antiwar protests then sweeping the nation.

“There will be no political activity by this group unless exposure of the lies and myths of communism and socialism is so construed by some professors,” an Orange County fundraiser for the group told The Times back then. There is “still time to save this great country from the enemy who is plotting and scheming around the clock.”

In 1970, the year four antiwar protesters at Ohio’s Kent State University were killed by National Guardsmen, Carol Bates Brown was a member of the VIVA chapter at what is now Cal State Northridge. She didn’t approve of students who marched against the war, burned draft cards or took over administration buildings.

“We baked cookies and sent them to the soldiers,” Brown said.

But she yearned to do more. A chance encounter with Bob Dornan, an Air Force veteran and future congressman who was then a local TV talk show host, sowed the seeds of an idea.

Dornan wore a bracelet given to him by Vietnamese mountain tribesmen — a reminder to him of the sacrifices of war. He introduced Brown and classmate Kay Hunter to the wives of POWs. The students were so moved by their stories, they decided to travel to Vietnam and obtain their own bracelets to show support for POWS.

“Amazingly, nobody wanted to pay to send two sorority girls to Vietnam with a war going on,” Brown said with a laugh.

Instead, they decided to make and sell their own bracelets, using the proceeds to print bumper stickers and brochures and buy ads promoting awareness of imprisoned and missing servicemen.

Jack Zeider’s Midway Stamping & Die Works in Santa Monica was hired to make a few prototypes.

“Pops had no idea what he was getting into. It just snowballed,” said Richard Zeider, an Oregon dentist who worked for his father during college. “He started at 500 a week. Then 1,000. Then 10,000. At one point, he was making 40,000 a week.”

His father eventually employed 120 workers, mostly college kids and Vietnam veterans who pumped out bracelets around the clock. Two tons of brass a day came in one door and went out the other as bracelets.

“He didn’t make a lot of money on it,” Zeider said. “He did it because he was patriotic.”

Brown became national chairwoman of the bracelet campaign for VIVA and worked six days a week, from morning to midnight. “My mother would find me asleep in my bed covered with checks and bank deposit slips,” she said. She eventually dropped out of school.

“There was something about a specific name being on them,” said Brown, 62, who went on to work on POW/MIA issues for the nonprofit National League of Families and later for the Pentagon. “People made a personal connection — ‘I’m watching out for this guy.’”

The plight of the POWs gave people a way to separate their feelings toward policymakers from their feelings toward those who fought in the war — a shift in public attitude still evident today. Whatever people think of U.S. policy on Iraq and Afghanistan, support for the troops remains strong.

So, too, do the connections made by Vietnam-era bracelet wearers. Thirty-seven years after the war’s end, the Defense Department’s Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office receives requests for information on former POWs or relatives of missing servicemen nearly every day.

“It’s a delicate matter,” said Larry Greer, a spokesman for the office. “Some families have told us they don’t want to hear from people.”

That’s what Lenore Dowling thought when she never heard from the family of Air Force Col. Elton Lawrence Perrine — one of more than 2,600 servicemen unaccounted for at the end of the war.

The case had gnawed at Dowling, 56, since she first slipped on Perrine’s bracelet in high school. Ten years ago, she left a message for Perrine’s family on a veterans website. In January, she received an e-mail from Perrine’s niece: His remains had been found.

“I was absolutely floored,” said Dowling, who was invited by the family to attend Perrine’s funeral at Arlington National Cemetery. “My guy was finally coming home.”

Air Force Capt. James Hivner was 60 miles north of Hanoi on Oct. 5, 1965, when his F-4 fighter was hit. He dropped his bombs onto the ammunition dump he was targeting and ejected from the burning plane.

Hivner was quickly captured and endured nearly eight years of brutality. He was beaten and whipped, starved, and held in near-total isolation. In 1973, he was one of 590 American POWs in Vietnam released as part of the cease-fire agreement that ended the war.

“I was in the hospital recovering when I started getting these little packages,” Hivner said.

Inside each was a bracelet with his name etched on it and a note of thanks.

Through the years, the 79-year-old retired colonel has received scores of bracelets. The most recent came last Memorial Day. He keeps them in a shoebox.

“I got one from a woman who said back then she was a little girl. She was at a swimming meet and there was a rule you couldn’t wear any jewelry,” Hivner said. “She said, ‘Oh, no, I can’t take it off.’”

After much discussion, the girl was allowed to swim wearing Hivner’s name.

Hivner, who lives in Plano, Texas, keeps in contact with 31 people who wore his bracelet. Most of them don’t know about the others.

“A lot of them thought they were the only person who had my name on a bracelet,” Hivner said. “They feel like they’ve got a direct line to me. I don’t want them to think they’re part of a party line. I owe them that.”

When one of his “bracelet family” died, Hivner stayed in contact with his widow. When he didn’t get a Christmas card from her a few years later, Hivner called the woman’s daughter, who informed him of her mother’s death. Hivner now stays in touch with the daughter.

Hivner has followed his far-flung adopted family through marriage, children, even grandchildren. And they have come to know Hivner’s wife, Phyllis; his two daughters, who were 6 and 8 years old when he was taken prisoner; and his four grandsons.

“We talk about the kind of stuff you would with any friend,” said Karen Owings, 64, of Mission Viejo, who tracked down Hivner a decade ago.

She can still recall the transcendent connection she felt in 1970 when she bought her bracelet and saw that Oct. 5 — the date Hivner was taken prisoner — was also her birthday.

“I’ve never met the man,” Owings said. “But he is part of my family.”

The bracelets arrive in the mail with the regularity of the seasons. Each one sends a shudder through John “Jack” Ensch.

Eventually, each one leaves him with a feeling of joy and thankfulness.

“I’m one of the lucky ones. I came back,” said Ensch, 73. “It was a part of my life, not the end of my life.”

Ensch, released in 1973, retired as a Navy captain in 1995. Today he works as a veterans outreach coordinator for the San Diego Padres, where he is known as “Capt. Jack.” He keeps some of his POW bracelets in his office at Petco Park — along with a brick from the notorious Hanoi Hilton prison camp where he was held.

When Ensch arrived there in August 1972, he brought news that he passed along to his fellow prisoners through tap codes between cells: People across America were wearing bracelets with their names on them.

“They were dumbfounded,” Ensch said.

Ensch is still struck by the outpouring of goodwill.

“Even those people who were against the Vietnam War could indentify with us being held captive there — the torture and the mistreatment. Nobody could argue that wasn’t wrong,” he said. “I think it was a collective learning experience for our society.”

So when someone reaches out to Ensch, he always reaches back.

Joleta McNelis’ “Dear John” e-mail arrived March 29 — the 37th anniversary of Ensch’s release.

“I would be honored to receive your (our) bracelet,” Ensch wrote back, telling McNelis about his family and career. “I’ll sign off with the sign off that ended every tap code communication by all POWs during our time in captivity — GBU.”

God bless you.

mike.anton@latimes.com