MATTOON, Ill. — Lisa Hamblen was only 11 years old when she promised to honor an American aviator imprisoned in North Vietnam.
Metal prisoner of war bracelets were a personal way of honoring American military personnel held captive or unaccounted for during the Vietnam War. Owners of the bracelets were told to never take them off until the prisoner returned home or was confirmed as killed. When the prisoners or missing did come back the bracelet should be returned to them as a reminder of how people remembered them during their ordeal.
Hamblen took the obligations of the bracelet very seriously.
"I was getting ready to dance in the 'Nutcracker Suite' back then and I was told I had to take the bracelet off because dancers could not wear jewelry on stage. I remember I wouldn't take it off. I took that obligation seriously. I prayed for him every day." Hamblen recalled of the incident nearly 40 years ago.
Finally, her mother offered a compromise: she held out her hand and touched her daughter's and slipped over the bracelet so it remained on a wrist during the ballet performance.
The bracelet then went back on Lisa's wrist and stayed there. In 1973 America's combat role ended in Vietnam. The prisoners were coming home. But Hamblen never confirmed what happened to the subject of her prayers. He had been shot down over North Vietnam in 1967 with the fighter group he was leading from the U.S.S. Constellation.
"You would see rolls and rolls of names on the television screen. But I never saw his. I thought he never came back," Hamblen said during an interview this past week in her Mattoon home.
But she kept the bracelet just in case she might return it to the POW someday.
More than 30 years later, Hamblen was doing research on the Internet and decided to type in the name of the aviator: William "Bill" P. Lawrence.
What she came up on the monitor was an incredible surprise. Bill Lawrence had returned home, been promoted to vice admiral before retiring from the Navy and had served as superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. Before Vietnam he was a test pilot and first to take Naval aircraft past twice the speed of sound and an astronaut candidate for the Mercury space program through NASA.
The POW on Hamblen's bracelet was a true national hero.
Lawrence was also a hero from his home state of Tennessee. He was named a poet laureate of Tennessee and recognized for his athletic talents from his youth in that state and with the Naval Academy. His poem "Oh Tennessee, My Tennessee" was composed in his head while he was imprisoned in the Hanoi Hilton, an infamous POW prison in North Vietnam.
"I was amazed. All those accomplishments. He was an amazing man considering what he went through. He also had two amazing daughters. Wendy (Lawrence) had gone through the Naval Academy and became an astronaut. Laurie (MacPherson Lawrence) was a doctor. I couldn't imagine what they went through when he was captured and didn't return for six years," Hamblen said.
Unfortunately, Hamblen was too late to meet Adm. Lawrence. He died in 2005. But she did start efforts to contact one of his daughters to arrange for returning the bracelet. She felt bound to that obligation from years before.
"Laurie didn't return my email right off. I figured she might have thought I was some crank or something. Then I tried again when I was told spam blocks might have killed my message. Her response came through one night. I was so excited," Hamblen recalled.
In a few days, Hamblen will travel to the East Coast for the commissioning ceremony of the guided missile destroyer William P. Lawrence.
Hamblen will have the chance to meet Lawrence's daughters in person and second wife, Diane. (Lawrence learned of the divorce decree from 1971 two weeks before he was released from North Vietnam. His captors held back the news for more than a year as an apparent final method of mental torture against Lawrence. Physically tortured as well, Lawrence met his second wife, a physical therapist, after his return to America through assistance of another past inmate of the Hanoi Hilton, John McCain.)
"I've told Laurie I am a hugger. I'm not sure if she is a hugger, too, but through our correspondence she has been very gracious to me," Hamblen said.
So the little patriot from Mattoon will get to meet the family of the hero she prayed for so long ago.
"That's part of seeing this through by returning the bracelet. I knew when I was wearing it there was someone out there who needed my prayers. I just must have been a very intense 11-year-old." she said.
Information from: Mattoon Journal-Gazette, http://www.jg-tc.com