By Maryl Ball Sellman
Oslo American School 1960-1963
Recently, America took time to honor our heroes in the form of Memorial Day, a holiday especially poignant to military families. Memorial Day took on a new meaning for me with just a simple bracelet.
Maj. Robert Dyczkowski was a man I never met, yet I knew him well. I kept him alive in my heart with his name and date of disappearance in Vietnam etched in a POW/MIA bracelet I wore on my left wrist for 25 years until circumstances led to its removal.
In 1970, I was a senior in college. I noticed a group of women calling themselves “Mothers and Others for Peace” assembling in the quad on campus. They were passing out bracelets, asking students to put them on until the soldier whose name was on the bracelet had returned. I ambled on over, stuck my hand in the box, plucked out one that read “Maj. Robert Dyczkowski 23 April 1966,” put it on my wrist as a commitment, and on that day, began a ritual of silently saying a prayer for his safe return.
Years passed---25 to be exact. I got married, we had children, we moved to different homes, worked, lived our lives like everyone else, and yet I always knew that there was another person with us at all times. The bracelet went through lots of wear and tear, and had to be taken often to a jeweler to be bolstered when it would become bent to the point of breaking from being caught on a stroller or in the handles of an extraordinarily heavy plastic grocery bag. In the 25th year of my life with Maj. Dyczkowski, I happened to be at my doctor’s office. He saw my scratched, dented and repaired bracelet, then looked at me and sadly commented, “I don’t think he will be coming home.” It was something I hadn’t even considered, because it was a part of my skin at this point and to be honest, I was a bit unsettled by his words.
The next day, I decided it was finally time for me to research this man and find out what I could about his life and service to America. I drove to our small library, walked up to the reference desk and asked if I could order information on a soldier missing in action from the Library of Congress, since this was in the days when I didn’t know much about the internet and it was my only option.
“Library of Congress, eh?” quipped the clerk. “Good luck with that, honey. Here’s the form. It‘s supposed to be here in two weeks, but I wouldn‘t count on it.”
I waited the obligatory two weeks, then returned with my hopes high. I saw a different clerk at the desk and inquired about my microfilm order from the Library of Congress.
“Library of Congress, eh?” smiled the new clerk. “Not here yet. Good luck. Might be a couple of months.”
I returned three weeks later and there it was, a roll of black microfilm as large as a Goodyear tire. My heart thudded in my chest as I walked to the machine which would reveal this man’s story. I sat in the chair, threaded the film, and quickly realized that this particular roll of film was not just about my soldier. It contained the personal and military information of hundreds of soldiers declared prisoners of war or missing in action, and I knew I would be sitting there far longer than anticipated as I couldn’t just roll the film through to my final destination. My eyes were transfixed on each serviceman’s life and the information relating to them.
The reel was filled with biographical, personal and military information (with numerical addresses as well as some personal and military data blacked out), the circumstances of their disappearance, letters of testimony from other soldiers who were with them at the time of their capture or disappearance, as well as letters from mothers, wives, children, relatives. These were letters of anguish and despair, frustration, pleas, and heart-wrenching agony over what had happened their son, their husband, their father. They desperately wanted answers. They needed closure. I quietly sat there in the library with tears streaming down my face for the those soldiers and for their families who would never know what had happened to their loved ones. I tried to control myself, for it was difficult to read anything while my eyes were filled with tears and my heart with grief.
Finally, near the end (of course) of the reel, there was the lengthy file on Maj. Robert Dyczkowski, complete with a picture of a young, handsome, proud and smiling Air Force Major in uniform, and I really did lose it at that point. I managed to get up and walked to the desk, bought a roll of quarters, and began making copies of everything disclosed about him. I learned he was married with two young daughters, had been flying with two other jets on a mission in Vietnam when his plane was hit and he just disappeared, giving everyone hope he had been captured, not killed. Sadly, many decades later, his military tags were on display in a museum in Hanoi where American diplomats were allowed to enter and collect data. The military had declared him dead and promoted him to the rank of Colonel.
It’s amazing how coincidences occur in our lives. Inside his dossier, Maj. Dyczkowski, along with his wife and little girls, had lived in my home town! Their numerical address was blocked out, but the street was only a few blocks from the library. I was stunned. Years later when I finally mastered the technology of the internet, I looked up the last name of his wife, hoping she hadn’t remarried, and there she was, now living in another state. I wrote her a letter explaining how I had kept the memory of her husband on my wrist and asked if she would like for me to send her the bracelet. She replied immediately and thanked me for wearing that bracelet, and told me that I could take it off and put it in a place where I would continue to think about him and the sacrifice that he made for our country as well as all the other men and women who have made the supreme sacrifice for the United States of America.
Memorial Day took on another new meaning for me at that moment, all because of a bracelet.
ശിപ്വ്രെച്കെദ് ഇന് സൌത്ത് കാരോളിന
