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.
"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."
