Enter television personality and future Congressman Bob Dornan. In late 1969, six years before his successful run for Congress, Dornan suggested modifying Montagnard friendship bracelets to ones bearing the names of missing American servicemembers as a way to call attention to their plight.

Dornan had a close connection to this project: A former Air Force fighter pilot, Dornan’s good friend, Col. David Hrdlicka was a POW held by communist Pathet Lao forces after his F-105D Thunderchief was shot down in Laos. Dornan kept his friend close to mind by wearing a Montagnard bracelet he had obtained in Vietnam.

Dornan introduced Carol Bates, Kay Hunter, and several other VIVA members to the wives of three missing pilots, who asked for their help in drawing public attention to the MIA and POW issues. Hunter then began to explore ways to make bracelets. She dropped out of VIVA, and so Carol Bates, another student, Steve Frank, and their adviser, Gloria Coppin, began looking for ways to set up the bracelet program. Funding the design and production was the main issue. Luckily, an engraver in Santa Monica agreed to make 10 sample bracelets.

The three then tried to raise funds for the production and distribution of the bracelets. They approached Ross Perot, the Texas entrepreneur who was a strong backer of the POW/MIA cause, several times, but were rebuffed.

Then, in 1970, Gloria Coppin’s husband donated enough brass and copper to make 1,200 bracelets. VIVA signed an agreement with the Santa Monica engraver to make the bracelets and agreed to reimburse him with donations. They began selling the nickel-plated bracelets for $2.50 and copper bracelets for $3.

At the suggestion of local POW/MIA families, members of VIVA attended the National League of Families of Americans Missing in Southeast Asia’s second annual meeting in Washington, D.C., in late September 1970, where they met many wives and parents interested in the idea. Dornan continued to publicize the issue on his Los Angeles television talk show and promoted the bracelets.

On Veterans Day, November 11, 1970, VIVA officially kicked off the bracelet program with a big news conference at the Universal Sheraton Hotel in Los Angeles. On hand for the event, which was arranged by the model and actress Rosemarie Bowe Stack, the wife of the actor Robert Stack, were a handful of Hollywood actors, Los Angeles Dodgers star pitcher Don Drysdale, several POW wives, and former POW Bob Frishman.

Public response quickly grew and VIVA began getting more than 12,000 orders a day. The program produced revenue to pay for brochures, bumper stickers, buttons, advertising, and other media materials to publicize the POW and MIA issues.

During its existence, VIVA sold nearly five million bracelets along with millions of bumper stickers, buttons, brochures, and matchbooks, and placed newspaper ads to draw attention to the missing troops in Vietnam. VIVA closed its doors in 1976.

Still, in 1972, when I saw that table of bracelets, pins, and literature, I took notice. I put a donation in the jar, got a button (which I still have today), and a bracelet with the name “CAPT LAWRENCE VICTOR FRIESE, USMC, N. VIETNAM, 2-24-68.”

I wore that bracelet every day from then on. I made it home from combat. I found out many years later that Capt. Friese came home on March 14, 1973, one of 591 American POWs who returned from captivity following the signing of the Paris Peace Accords during Operation Homecoming between February 12 and April 1, 1973.

I now have a replacement bracelet engraved, “STAFF SERGEANT WILLIAM M. LOGAN, USA, 2-16-69, SVN.” And this bracelet never comes off.