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Re: A Picture to Go With the Bracelet

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: November 20, 2003

"A picture to go with the bracelet

By MIKE JAMES The Independent

ASHLAND Walking into Allyn's Jewelers in downtown Ironton, the seventh-grader walked up to the display case and pointed.

That one. Not the one with diamonds, nor the gold or silver ones, but the plain, stainless steel band adorned with nothing but a name, a rank and a date.

Why would you want that, her parents asked. You'll only lose it.

But to 12-year-old Ann Stamper, the letters shone brighter than jewels. The year was 1973 and the name on the bracelet, Albert Page Jr., belonged to a U.S. Air Force captain shot down over North Vietnam in 1967.

That day, the teenager joined thousands all over the United States wearing bracelets with the name of an American prisoner of war or serviceman missing in action. She paid $7 for it.

The war in Vietnam continued to rage and people like young Ann wanted a way to show their concern for the casualties of the war. She came from a family with a strong military tradition; her own uncle was in Vietnam and her grandfather was named Albert, and that was why she chose a bracelet with that name.

The bracelets came with the proviso to wear them until the servicemen named on them came home, alive or in a body bag, or otherwise accounted for.

That was 30 years ago. Ann is now 42 and her last name is Bush. She lives in Franklin Furnace and is the news clerk at The Independent.

First thing Wednesday morning, she opened her e-mail inbox and found, to her surprise and delight, a message from Page's sister with a picture of the fallen pilot.

For the first time, she saw the face that went with the name she'd worn on her wrist for so many years.

"It was a big shock. I thought to myself, I've got to print this and save it," she said.

"After all these years, I got his picture today. It was like I'd been searching for something for so long. It was a relief when I found it."

For years after getting the bracelet, she never considered the possibility that she'd know anything more about Page. It was enough just to keep that one name somehow alive and unforgotten.

But that didn't mean she wasn't curious. Three years ago, browsing Web sites belonging to POW/MIA groups, she posted a message on a "virtual wall," a site modeled after the Vietnam Memorial wall with its thousands of engraved names.

Soon after, she got a letter from a distant relative of Page's co-pilot, who had seen her message. That led to correspondence with relatives and friends of the pilot.

She learned that Page was a native of New Hampshire, where Bush herself, then an Air Force wife, had lived in the 1980s.

She learned that Page had a daughter, Kimberly, born the same month and year, September 1961, as herself.

And she learned that he had dark, close-cropped hair over a roundish face and a wide smile.

Earlier she'd received a four-page letter from Page's sister, Linda Page Wickens.

She read the news of a family she'd never met and cried as though they were her own people.

Wickens, who was 16 years younger than her brother, described him in flight: I was so young. I just knew he was a pilot, flew over the house now and then doing his wing tips as a hello or barrel rolls to show off. He got in trouble for that when he missed football practice and a game at UNH. So he went of course and did a fly over the UNH stadium ... big trouble for that but he loved it!

The letter continued, saying that Page, just short of the 100 missions he needed to go home, had said he'd go down with the jet rather than be taken prisoner. Wickens said the family recently found out Page's wingman was not with him when the plane went down, and the family never found out what happened to him.

"I think he would be really tickled that someone would, after all these years, still have had his bracelet and worn it," she said.

Wickens and her family wore similar bracelets bearing Page's name for many years. She said their mother wore hers until it literally fell apart.

Bush seldom wears her bracelet now, preferring to keep it safe on a shelf at home, now that the family is reconciled to the inescapable fact of his death.

She can laugh when she recalls her parents worrying that she'd lose it.

"Lose it? I've moved 15 times since then and I still have that bracelet. It's the only thing I've never lost."

MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or at (606) 326-2652.

Staff Writer KELLY MAY also contributed to this story.

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