Barton: An unspoken bond, still strong

Posted: September 30, 2006 - 5:38pm

My sister wore one during the Vietnam War.

So did other girls in our elementary school back in the late 1960s and early '70s.

They wore bracelets engraved with the names of U.S. servicemen who were either held prisoner or missing in action in a faraway place. These metal bands were part symbol, part fashion statement. They allowed many of the nation's young people to stand in solidarity with POWs, MIAs and their families and let them know they weren't forgotten.

As a bonus, the bracelets were cool, too.

One Atlanta schoolgirl, Monica Mastrianni, got hers when she was 12. It was made of brass with a silver plate. It bore the name of a classmate of her best friend's father, who was a 1958 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. This classmate and former midshipman was a Navy pilot and he was shot down over Hanoi and captured on Oct. 27, 1967.

Here's the name that was engraved: LCDR JOHN McCAIN III.

That's the same John McCain who has served as a Republican senator from Arizona for the past 20 years and is a player in national politics. But 39 years ago, McCain was trying to endure. He was one many American POWs held in the infamous Hoa Lo Prison, or "Hanoi Hilton." He was a prisoner in that hellhole for six years.

Mastrianni, who's now an architect living in Savannah, got her POW bracelet in 1970. She was 10 at the time. She wore it for three years, and she took it off at about the time McCain was released. She placed it inside her child's jewelry box. Fortunately, her mother kept it for her.

"Wearing bracelets was something my friend and I wanted to do," said Mastrianni, 46. "I requested John McCain's name because my friend's father had gone to the Naval Academy with him. I said prayers for him, even though I didn't know who he was. After the war, I didn't know what became of him, but I sometimes wondered. Now, you'd have to say that he's come a long way."

So did Mastrianni. Last week, she traveled to Washington, D.C., as part of the Live Oak Public Library Foundation's trip to the National Book Festival, held Saturday on the Mall. Mastrianni and her firm, BMW Architects, are designing the new southwest Chatham library branch. But last Thursday, she had designs on seeing McCain and presenting him with the bracelet.

She did just that - with an assist from Kris Edenfield, the library foundation's development coordinator. Edenfield once worked as campaign manager for U.S. Rep. Gil Gutknecht, R-Minn. Last Thursday, the congressmen escorted Mastrianni and Edenfield to the Senate side of the Capitol, then buttonholed U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., just off the Senate floor where McCain was speaking. Graham later brought McCain out to meet the woman who kept his name on her arm and in her prayers a long time ago.

"He was amazing with her," Edenfield said. "He hugged her and kissed her. It was a magic moment."

It was pretty special for Mastrianni as well.

"He told me that wearing the bracelet meant a lot to him and other POWs, and that they didn't know until 1971 that people were doing this for them," she said. "He said when the North Vietnamese found out, the prisoners got better treatment because Americans were paying attention."

Then he told her to keep the bracelet.

"He said it meant a lot to him that I wore it for so long," Mastrianni said. So the coolness continues. So does a solidarity that forever binds a free people to those who defend freedom.





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