News-Info-Alerts

Re: The Bracelet

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: August 20, 2003

"Bracelet connects local man to POW
By: Jennifer Potash , Staff Writer


A kid in 1971 acquired a special bracelet; 32 years later, a discovery.

   Chuck Robotti, a Princeton Township resident, recently had a blast from the past.

   While watching a documentary on Air Force fighter pilots in the Vietnam War, Mr. Robotti reconnected with a former U.S. prisoner of war.

   As a child in 1971, Mr. Robotti acquired a POW bracelet with the name of Air Force Major Leo K. Thorsness.

   The bracelets, designed by two women in California, aimed to draw attention to armed service personnel held as prisoners of war or missing in action.

   Owners began to return the simply engraved copper or aluminum bracelets, containing the name, rank, service, loss date and country of loss, to returning prisoners of war or, if their remains were discovered, to their families. As a teenager, Mr. Robotti spotted Major Thorsness' name among a newspaper list of freed prisoners of war.

   "Their addresses weren't made public and as a 14- or 15-year-old I had no way of getting it back to him," Mr. Robotti said. So, Mr. Robotti, who later served in the Marine Corps and is now the exalted ruler of the Princeton Elks, put the bracelet in a jewelry box and only thought of it occasionally during the ensuing years.

   But a few weeks ago, Mr. Robotti, now 42, learned Mr. Thorsness' whereabouts while watching the History Channel's "Mail Call" on the Wild Weasels, an elite squad of Air Force fighter pilots who sought out enemy surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft sites.

   "I saw his name on the TV and thought about the bracelet," said the Dorann Avenue resident. Mr. Robotti found the bracelet in the jewelry box and his wife Anne immediately suggested looking up Mr. Thorsness — a retired colonel and Congressional Medal of Honor recipient — on the Internet.

   Upon learning Mr. Thorsness was living in Arizona, the couple called to ask his permission to return the bracelet.

   After hearing from Mr. Thorsness, the Robottis made plans to send him the bracelet.

   "(Mr. Thorsness) was somewhat surprised," Ms. Robotti said. "He said it was only once in a blue moon that people contacted him about the bracelets."

   On April 30, 1967, while flying his 93rd mission, just seven missions shy of going home, then-Maj. Thorsness and another Air Force pilot, Harry Johnson, were shot down over North Vietnam.

   Mr. Thorsness spent six years as a prisoner of war, during which he was denied medical treatment for back injuries, before his release in 1973.

   President Richard Nixon honored Col. Thorsness with the Congressional Medal of Honor that same year for an act of bravery during a mission that took place some time before he was shot down.

   According to the award citation, after another plane was shot down and the crew forced to eject, then-Major Thorsness assisted the rescue efforts while fighting enemy aircraft. During the air battle, his aircraft grew dangerously low on fuel.

   Another Air Force aircraft in the area also was critically low on fuel and the crew faced bailing out unless they could reach a refueling tanker. He directed the fueling tanker to the distressed aircraft while he only narrowly averted disaster, landing his plane at a forward base with a virtually dry fuel tank, according to the award citation.

   Col. Thorsness was attending a convention for Medal of Honor recipients this week and could not be reached for comment.


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