POW/MIA bracelet kindles memories of deceased son

Last week, I wrote a story about a woman who wore a POW/MIA bracelet for 38 years until the remains of a soldier missing in Vietnam came home.

Kathy Strong was 12 years old when she received the bracelet for Christmas, inscribed with the name of Spc. 5th Class James Moreland, a Green Beret from Bessemer, Ala.

After the story ran, I received a call from Margaret Williams, a reader from Phenix City. She said her son also received a POW/MIA bracelet around 1972. So after reading my story in Sunday’s Ledger-Enquirer, she went looking for it.

I asked Margaret to tell me a little about her son, Frank W. Williams III. She said he had a blood disease and died of a rare bacterial infection in 1974, just three years after graduating from Central High School. He was her only child and died at age 22.

“It took a toll,” said the 84-year-old woman. “You never really get over it.”

Margaret said she still has many of her son’s belongings, and earlier this week she found his bracelet tucked away in one of his drawers. The name inscribed was Lt. Ben Purcell, and she wondered if the soldier ever came home.

I promised Margaret that I would investigate. So, after hanging up the phone, I Googled Purcell’s name. That brought up a ton of information, including a 2013 article on the Veteran’s United Network website titled, “Col. Ben Purcell: Highest Ranking Vietnam POW Dies at 85.”

Purcell, it turns out, was a Georgia native captured in Vietnam on Feb. 8, 1968, one day after Moreland went missing. From the article, I learned that he was in a helicopter that was shot down near Quang Tri City, and he spent more than five years as a POW in Laos.

Purcell and his crew spent 62 months at various prison camps. As the highest-ranking officer, he endured solitary confinement for 58 months. His captors tried to break his spirit, but Purcell refused to betray his country, according to the article. He escaped POW camps on two occasions but was a caught and returned to prison.

On March 27, 1973, Purcell was finally released during Operation Homecoming, a series of diplomatic negotiations that led to hundreds of American POWs returning home. After retiring from the Army in 1980, he was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives as a Democrat, representing the areas around Dawsonville and Dahlonega from 1993 to 1997. He and his wife also co-authored a book, titled “Love & Duty.”

Purcell died on April 2, 2013, in his hometown of Clarksville, Ga.

After discovering all the information, I called Margaret with the details and she was ecstatic. After reading about Kathy Strong, she had just felt a need to find out more, she said, and now she was satisfied.

“I’m just glad that he wasn’t just forgotten over there,” she said of the captured soldier whose name was inscribed on her deceased son’s bracelet. “I just feel there’s closure there.”

This story was originally published June 2, 2016 at 8:52 AM with the headline "POW/MIA bracelet kindles memories of deceased son."