Lynn woman discovers airman on POW-MIA bracelet is alive

LYNN – Josie Weaver got the surprise of her life earlier this week during a visit to Fraser Field where a replica of the Vietnam War memorial wall had just arrived.She carried with her a POW-MIA bracelet bearing the name Air Force Lt. Col. Carlyle “Smitty” Smith Harris, which she had purchased from a friend’s father nearly 40 years earlier in support of the war effort.Weaver planned to leave the metal bracelet beneath Harris’ name, figuring someone among the traveling wall staff would bring it to the actual monument in Washington, D.C. where mementos are often left. But Harris’ name was not among the thousands of casualties listed. The wall staff searched their data bases and soon learned that Harris had been taken prisoner but was later released. Weaver was both stunned and elated.”Back in 1971, I was working at the Giant department store on the Lynnway, next to the Harbor House, about where Wal-Mart is now,” said Weaver, 65, who lives near Flax Pond and whose late husband, Malcolm, was employed by GE. “The father of one of the girls at the Giant store was selling the bracelets through a local veterans’ post, which in those days was the only place you could get one.”For four decades, Weaver kept the bracelet in a drawer, always questioning why she didn’t toss it away, yet overcome by a sense that it held some importance. When she told colleagues at Union Hospital, where she volunteers, that Harris had survived captivity, they urged her to find out more.”They Googled his name and found him, even his picture, and after that I was able to get his address and phone number from the white pages,” she said. “It listed him in Tupelo, Mississippi so I called on Tuesday and explained who I was and all about the bracelet that I had these many years.”Harris, pilot of a missile-laden F-105 Thud fighter plane, had been shot down over North Vietnam on April 4, 1965, and immediately captured. It was only his sixth combat mission and the target was the Ham Rong railroad bridge. He was held at the famous Hanoi Hilton war prison and other jails near the Chinese border for a total of 2,871 days – or 7.8 years. He was released on Feb. 12, 1973 as part of Operation Homecoming, two years after Weaver had purchased the bracelet.”After the war, I put the bracelet away. It was just a piece of tin but for some reason I wasn’t able to throw it away,” said Weaver. “I went on with my life. This was the 1970s and there were no computers, no easy way to track people down.”When Weaver heard The Wall That Heals: The Traveling Vietnam War Memorial was coming to Lynn, she felt a premonition that it would somehow impact her life. “I just had a strong sense that I should go and see it. I found it very emotional, and when they told me Lt. Col. Harris had been released from captivity, I can’t tell you the feeling of joy I experienced,” she said. “I hoped to myself that he had come back and had a wonderful life.”Harris, 80, did just that.He and his wife, Louise, who will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary in December, already had two daughters, Robin and Carolyn, when Harris was assigned to a fighter squadron in Okinawa in 1965. She was pregnant with a son, Lyle, who the airman would not see until the boy was 8 years old.Harris remained in the Air Force for six years after his homecoming and was promoted to full colonel with two Silver Star medals for heroism on his chest. Once back in the civilian world at age 50, he became an attorney, earned an MBA and worked primarily in the Mississippi banking industry. He also continued to fly, partnering in the ownership of five different aircraft until a minor health problem grounded him last year.”He’s an amazing man,” Louise Harris said of her husband. “He always says when he was first captured, he thought he would be released in six weeks or six months, not eight years. Sometimes he’s very hyperactive because after all that time wasted he’s never going to waste another minute.”Harris was golfing Friday when reached