Re: An MIA, a Family & a Bracelet

Date: June 04, 2004

"Mason City native returns MIA bracelet to family of Col. Lester Holmes

By KAREN HEINSELMAN, Courier Staff Writer

HONOLULU, Hawaii --- Ralph Gallogly never met Lester Holmes.

Col. Holmes, a decorated pilot from Plainfield, was shot down over northern Vietnam six years before Gallogly joined the U.S. Air Force.

For more than two decades, Gallogly wore a bracelet in memory of Holmes. Gallogly, a native of Mason City, learned the story of the missing Iowa pilot and the mysterious end of Holmes' final mission.

Today, Gallogly plans to express mail that stainless steel band from his home in Hawaii to Arizona and Bruce Holmes, the oldest of Lester's three sons. It's tradition: MIA bracelets are returned to family when the missing are found.

Last month after years of searching, Holmes' remains came home to Northeast Iowa. Military rites and burial on May 22 fell 37 years to the date that the husband and father went missing.

At that emotional ceremony, Holmes' adult children also buried three bracelets. Now, Gallogly wants the sons of Lester Holmes to have the constant reminder he's carried all these years.

"I have worn that bracelet for a long time and would like the family to have it if they want it," Gallogly wrote in an e-mail to the Courier. "It has been all over the place with me during my Air Force career and Col. Holmes was remembered every time I put it on in the morning."

Gallogly, who retired as a master sergeant, learned the news while reading an online edition of the Mason City Globe Gazette, a sister publication to the Courier.

"I caught the headline, and I said 'No way. This can't be'," said Gallogly, now an assistant dean for military campus programs at Hawaii Pacific University.

"For me it was important," he added. "It is important that that bracelet find its way home."

For Gallogly and others who wear MIA bracelets, the band is a small but meaningful gesture honoring veterans who have not been accounted for and their families.

"There is a tendency for all of us, including me, to just live day by day and not pay any attention to those who have gone before us," Gallogly said. "So every day I put it on, it forced me to remember him and all the guys."

Gallogly started wearing a bracelet for the Iowa pilot in the late 1970s or early 80s. The inscription about Holmes, his service, date missing and other details became worn, so Gallogly got a second band.

Gallogly once temporarily lost the precious piece in Korea, having removed the bracelet during a sandbagging effort. He was relieved to find the item in his field jacket pocket a year later.

"The funny thing is I never forgot that bracelet," Gallogly said.

Bruce Holmes is touched by the gesture. And the brothers report inquires from others who also wore bracelets for their father.

"It's really an honor that someone would take the time and, you know, follow the progress and continue the hope," he said.

But he's not surprised that servicemen remember their own. Bruce and his brother, Tommy, and Gallogly intend to wear other bracelets for other missing vets.

For the 30-some years that Tommy Holmes wore a band for his dad, people would always mistake the jewelry for a medical alert bracelet.

"It opens up the whole realization that there are still MIAs," Tommy said. "There are still 1,859 names ... There's plenty of bracelets."

© The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier 2003
Waterloo & Cedar Falls, Iowa"