Bracelet's bond
Thirty-five years later, a former Vietnam POW meets the Mobile woman who prayed for the downed pilot whose name she wore on her wrist
By GEORGE WERNETH
Staff Reporter
As the Vietnam War raged during her freshman year at the University of South Alabama in 1971, Anne Guy began wearing a bracelet bearing a simple yet powerful inscription:
Capt. Barry Bridger 1-23-67.
Guy wore the bracelet everywhere. She swore she would not take it off until Capt. Barry Bridger, a U.S. Air Force pilot shot down over North Vietnam on Jan. 23, 1967, was freed from prison.
She did not know Bridger but ordered the bracelet through the mail to show her concern for American POWs being tortured in North Vietnam.
Finally, after wearing the bracelet for about two years, she read an article in March 2, 1973 edition of the Mobile Press. It gave a list of 106 U.S. military POWs who had just been freed and were coming home. Bridger's name was on the list. She could take the bracelet off and feel at peace.
Thirty-five years later Thursday night Guy, now 54, found herself in a warm embrace with Bridger, a retired lieutenant colonel, at the Heron Lakes Country Club in west Mobile. She had learned that Bridger, a motivational speaker, was in Mobile to address a meeting of the South Alabama Chapter of the Military Officers Association of America, where outstanding area ROTC and JROTC cadets were being honored.
The attractive, blonde-haired woman, was meeting Bridger for the first time and she wanted to give him the bracelet. But he told her, "I want you to keep it and put it in a special place, in memory of all of those who didn't come home." She told him she would.
Bridger said, "We knew we had a lot of great Americans pulling for us." Guy told him she had prayed for him many times, and he responded, "I needed those prayers."
Bridger endured more than six years as a prisoner of war and later retired from the Air Force after 22 years of service. He now travels internationally giving motivational and inspirational talks to various groups as the ambassador-at-large for First Command Financial Planning, which he said sponsors his talks at no charge.
"I was in the Hanoi Hilton for most of the time," he told a reporter, shortly before his talk. "Almost all of us were repeatedly brutally tortured."
He said the treatment improved after North Vietnam leader Ho Chi Minh died in 1969. Bridger termed him, "A miserable, vindictive old man who couldn't take it out on Uncle Sam so he took it out on us."
As to how the POWs survived their ordeal, Bridger said, "It wasn't our policies that got us through that long night, it was our values." He concluded, "If there is one thing the POWs came out with a deep appreciation of, it is that although the cost of freedom is high, the blessings of liberty are priceless."
The 67-year-old North Carolina native, who is married with two adult children, now resides in Kansas City. He said that Republican presidential nominee John McCain was "my next door neighbor in a punishment camp." He praised McCain, noting that he "got up every day and tried to help somebody."
Guy, who teaches second grade at Council Traditional School in Mobile, said Thursday, "I've always been interested in what happened to him after the war. I wanted to know did he have a family and did he have a good life?"
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