That’s all it took. Three days and I tracked down the daughter of Maj. Chambliss M. Chesnutt. One of my readers suggested the website honorstates.org to find information on the soldier whose POW/MIA bracelet I found in a box of stuff I bought at an auction. I went on and saw that his wife had posted there back in 2016. There was no other information available. I did a few Google searches as I found the time. Somehow I found pownetwork.org and there was mention of a story on military.com about a Pensacola woman finding Maj. Chesnutt’s military ID in Vietnam in 2019. I was intrigued.
Jill Hubb’s was looking for her late father’s remains in Vietnam when a Vietnamese man showed her a military ID his father had found 50 years earlier. It took her a while to convince the man to let her have the ID card, but once she made him understand through an interpreter how much it would mean to the soldier’s family, he finally agreed to let it go. The ID turned out to belong to the soldier on my POW/MIA bracelet.
Ms. Hubbs went through the same search I’ve been making. She found the information she was looking for on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund website called The Wall of Faces. There, she discovered an email address for Maj. Garry Chesnutt, one of Cham’s three children and contacted him. You can read the article here: https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/09/18/missing-id-card-spent-50-years-vietnam-now-its-coming-home.html
The Wall of Faces is a virtual “wall”, but there are photos and remembrances posted. It was among these that I found a few others who also wore Maj. Chesnutt’s name on their bracelet. It hadn’t occurred to me before this that…of course…there had to have been multiple bracelets with the same name. After all, the originators of the POW/MIA bracelets produced nearly 5,000,000 bracelets by the time the doors closed on VIVA (Voices in Vital America) in 1976. By that time, people were sick of hearing about Vietnam and interest had wained. The sales of the bracelets funded countless stickers, pamphlets, flags and more to bring attention to our missing soldiers. The goal has always been to bring them home or repatriate their remains/belongings. You can read about the history of the POW/MIA bracelets here: https://www.pow-miafamilies.org/history-of-powmia-bracelets.html
You can still order one of these bracelets through the Ohio Chapter MIA/POW for $15. You can also buy flags, stickers, etc. You can download the order form here: https://www.pow-miafamilies.org/uploads/9/1/5/0/91501560/ohio_chapter_order_form_9-24-19.pdf
Mr. Virgo served in Vietnam with the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army. He told me things about his time there that he’d never told anyone else. I’m very proud of his service. The most emotional part of his funeral was when that young soldier knelt before me and handed me the flag from his coffin.
I emailed Maj. Chesnutt’s daughter yesterday…offering to send her my bracelet. In the post I read from 2017, she said two other women had tracked her down and sent her their bracelets. She said she wears one, and she is saving the other for her kids. If I hear back from her, I’ll let you know.
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“You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.”
Isaiah 26:3 ESV