Woman honors memory of fallen soldier

It started as a simple promise made by a 12-year-old girl who got a POW/MIA bracelet for Christmas.

Kathy Strong was a seventh-grader growing up in Fremont, Calif., and asked Santa for the gift during the Vietnam War.

On Dec. 25, 1972, she opened the beautifully decorated box, which contained a bracelet inscribed with the name of Spc. 5th Class James Moreland, a Green Beret from Bessemer, Ala. They were strangers, but the school girl vowed that day to wear the metal bracelet until the missing soldier came home.

Strong kept that promise for 38 years, eventually placing the bracelet in Moreland’s coffin, after his remains were found in Lang Vei, Vietnam, and returned to his family in 2011.

“My promise was always to give the bracelet to James when he came home,” said the Walnut Creek, Calif., resident during a phone interview. “So before the funeral they opened up the casket and I placed the bracelet on the left sleeve of his uniform because I had worn the bracelet on my left wrist for all of those years.”

Now, at age 56, Strong is on a mission to preserve Moreland’s memory. She recently launched a campaign to have a memorial brick with his name placed in each of the 50 states.

She purchased a commemorative paver at the National Infantry Museum, and will be part of a Memorial Day dedication ceremony, which will be held at 10 a.m. today at the Heritage Walk. On Sunday, she went to Birmingham for another brick dedication ceremony at the Alabama Veterans Memorial Park. So far, she has eight bricks in eight different states, and intends to finish the job.

“I just want to make sure James Moreland is never forgotten and that’s going to be my promise, not just on Christmas Day 1972, but for the rest of my life,” she said.

Missing in Action

Moreland was born in Alabama on Sept. 29, 1945, according to a short biography provided by the group that created the bracelet. Strong said he attended Lyman Ward Military Academy in Camp Hill, Ala., before graduating from Western High School in Anaheim, Calif., in 1963.

An all-star high school football player, he became an avid outdoorsman and loved to fish and hunt. He attended both Santa Ana Junior College and Fullerton Junior College in California before enlisting in the Army in Sept. 1966. He was assigned to the Green Berets, where he served as a paratrooper and medic.

Moreland went missing on Feb. 7, 1968, in South Vietnam. At the time, he was stationed at an Army base camp at Lang Vei, which came under heavy attack by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces.

“The battle raged throughout the night and most of the next day, until the enemy managed to break through the outer defenses,” according to the biography. “Suffering many casualties and heavy damage, American forces had to evacuate.

“According to persons who were with Jim, he was critically wounded and was unable to be moved because of his condition,” it continued. “He had to be left in the partially-destroyed bunker while evacuating personnel fought their way out through an escape route. The base fell into the hands of the Communists and remained under their control for several days. Eventually, the base was regained by American forces, but a complete search of the ruins turned up no evidence of Jim’s fate or whereabouts.”

Five years after the incident, Strong and her junior high classmates were becoming more aware of the Vietnam War. Many began wearing nickel-plated and copper commemorative bracelets engraved with the name, rank, and loss date of captured or missing American soldiers. The bracelets were created by a California student group called Voices in Vital America. Between 1970 and 1976, approximately 5 million bracelets were distributed, according to news reports.

“It was just a few months before my 13th birthday and Vietnam was a huge story in the news and I just wanted to do my part,” Strong said. “It was a really big fad at the time, and both my sister and I received bracelets. Everyone in my seventh-grade English class had one.”

An Emotional Connection

Strong said she knew absolutely nothing about Moreland when she slipped the bracelet on her left wrist that Christmas. She had never even seen a photo of the missing serviceman. Yet, every day she looked for his name in an alphabetical listing of returning soldiers that was published in her local newspaper. A year later, she still hadn’t seen his name. So, she wrote to the company that made the bracelets, requesting more information. The organization sent the biography, which included a picture of Moreland dressed in his Green Beret uniform.

Strong held onto the biography, keeping the bracelet in place, even as the years rolled by. “I wore the bracelet to my high school graduation. I wore it to my college graduation. I wore it to my grandparents’ 50th anniversary and my parents’ 50th anniversary,” she said. “I’ve worn the bracelet in all 50 states and I’ve also been to Canada, Mexico and Australia, and 21 countries in Europe, so far. So James Moreland and I have traveled the world together.”

At 25 years old, Strong injured her left wrist lifting something heavy at work. She needed surgery, but every doctor she visited said she would have to remove the bracelet. She refused, and avoided having the surgery, until she found a doctor who had served in Vietnam.

“He admired my promise and he agreed to help me keep it,” she said. “So before the surgery I put my hands together, and he slid my bracelet from my left wrist on to my right wrist so I wouldn’t have to take the bracelet off. My hand was in a cast for several months. When I underwent physical therapy and the cast came off, then we just slipped the bracelet back on to my left wrist.

“I know as time went on, some people probably felt less connected with their bracelet, but I felt more connected with James Moreland,” she said. “I just truly believed that somehow I was supposed to help him get home.”

Meeting Loved Ones

In 1988, Strong’s local newspaper featured her in a story for the 20th anniversary of Moreland’s disappearance. She thought it might lead to more information about his whereabouts, but her hopes were dashed.

Then 20 years later, another story was published in the Contra Costa Times for the 40th anniversary. By then, the Internet age was in full swing, and Moreland’s two sisters saw the story online. They called the reporter who wrote the story and asked for help contacting Strong.

When Strong heard the news, she called Moreland’s sister, Linda Brown, who said his siblings wanted to meet her. They didn’t like to travel much. So Strong flew to Seattle, Wash., to see them in May of 2008.

“It was amazing,” she said. “I was nervous and I wasn’t sure we would have much in common, but we had James Moreland in common and that’s all we needed.”

After an emotional meeting and lunch at a restaurant, Brown told Strong: “When brother comes home, you’re invited to the funeral.”

The Contra Costa Times article also led Strong to some of the men who served with Moreland in Vietnam. Two were with Moreland on the last day of the battle of Lang Vei. One was his commanding officer, Paul Longgrear, who now lives in Georgia.

“I was the only one who had met both sides – both the men he served with and his family,” she said. “They didn’t meet each other until the funeral.”

Moreland Comes Home

A year and a half after meeting the sisters, Strong flew back to Seattle to observe Veteran’s Day with Moreland’s family. Then on January 2011, she received a phone call from Brown and her daughter, Lisa. Brown was bubbling with excitement, and broke the news:

“Brother’s coming home!” she shouted. Strong was the first person she thought to call.

“I was really, really excited for them,” said Strong. “It was the day (for which) they had been waiting for 43 years.”

So on May 14, 2011, they all gathered at Ashby Cemetery in Brierfield, Ala. Moreland’s mother and father were already buried there in a family plot, with an empty grave between them. They had always believed their son would come home one day, and wanted him buried near them, Strong said.

“About 500 people came to the funeral, and only two dozen were family members,” she recalled. “So it was an amazing turnout. People had seen our story on TV and read about it in the newspaper and people came from all across the country that were just drawn to the story.”

That’s when Strong finally slipped off the bracelet and placed it in the coffin. She still has a CBS News photo of her touching the flag-draped casket that day.

Strong has been recognized by veterans groups all over the nation for her dedication to the once lost serviceman, and was even mentioned in a 2011 speech by then-Secretary of State Leon E. Panetta.

“Kathy Strong should inspire us all,” he said during a POW/MIA Recognition Day Ceremony at the Pentagon. “For it should not be a few among us that help families carry the torch year after year, decade after decade for those who are missing; it needs to be all of us.”

This story was originally published May 29, 2016 at 9:40 PM with the headline "Woman honors memory of fallen soldier."