Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, August 13, 1995                   TAG: 9508140012
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV20   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: CLARENCE "MULLIE" MULHEREN
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

EX-SAILOR'S BRACELET IS BACK ON HIS WRIST

After joining the Navy in April 1943, during my senior year in high school, I trained to become a Navy frogman. We trained right through the Christmas holidays, for me the most difficult time to be away from home and loved ones.

But my family didn't forget me, and they sent a package that arrived a couple of days before Christmas. Among the gifts in the box was a sterling silver ID bracelet. Engraved on the top was my name and serial number. Engraved on the back was "Love, Mom and Dad."

In January 1944, my unit was sent to the Pacific, and for 18 months, my bracelet never left my wrist.

My unit returned to the States and was decommissioned in December 1945 in California. For most of us, it meant we would be home for Christmas for the first time in two years.

One shipmate, Bill O'Brien, was scheduled to leave the day after I left.

When I arrived home, my bracelet was missing. I was really down for a couple of days, but time heals and has a way of making you forget.

Last October, when my wife, Ann, and I arrived for our unit's reunion in Atlanta, one of the first shipmates I ran into was Bill O'Brien. Bill insisted he needed to see me in his hotel room at my first convenience.

The next morning, when Ann and I walked into his room, he opened a dresser drawer, took out a small, clear plastic envelope and handed it to me. I unzipped the little envelope, turned it upside down - and out fell a bracelet.

The inscription on top was worn and difficult to make out. The inside was in much better condition, and read "Love, Mom and Dad."

For a moment or two, we were quite emotional. The bracelet brought back so many memories of my combat experiences in the Pacific where it was my constant companion and good-luck charm. Of course my Mom and Dad, who have since died, came to mind.

Bill's best recollection was that he found my bracelet with a broken clasp in the barracks shower room. He said he must have put it in his seabag with intentions of mailing it to me, but forgot.

Bill's older brother, who lived at the family homeplace in North Carolina, died during the summer of 1994. His daughter, going through her father's belongings, found some Navy gear of Bill's and a bracelet with the name "Clarence C. Mulheren." "Do you know him?" she asked.

It is a gift from the past. I wear it constantly. It is a reminder not only of exciting events in my life, but of the love and support my Mom and Dad gave me when I was a sailor a long time ago, a long, long way from home.

Clarence "Mullie" Mulheren, a retired Giles County High School teacher and coach, lives in Pearisburg.