Bracelet find in Meteghan surprises daughter in Florida
Two sisters found an MIA bracelet for Capt. Chuck Finney on a Meteghan beach
Keri Sims doesn’t have a lot of memories of her father Charles Chuck Finney.
She was a very young child at the time of the Vietnam War and on the day men in suits came to the family’s home to tell her mother that her father was missing in action.
“That was probably my youngest memory because it was pretty traumatic,” she says.
From her home in Florida she says it’s crazy to think that a bracelet bearing her father’s name would be found buried in the sand on a beach in southwestern Nova Scotia.
As we reported in last week’s issue of the Tri-County Vanguard, the bracelet was found by sisters Louisette Saulnier and Odette Thibodeau, who were walking a beach in Meteghan, Digby County, searching for beach glass. What Saulnier found instead was a bracelet with the inscription: Capt. Chuck Finney 3-17-1969.
This was a bracelet marking the day that Capt. Finney went missing in action while serving in the Vietnam War. Bracelets such as the one found in Meteghan have been purchased and worn by many over the decades as a show of honour and remembrance to servicemen who were missing in action or were prisoners of war. Many people have worn bracelets bearing Capt. Finney’s name.
We spoke to Capt. Finney’s daughter after our first story went to press.
His daughter is these bracelets.
She says after her father’s status was changed from missing in ac- familiar with A display for Capt. (Maj.) Chuck Finney at the Tupelo Veterans Museum in Mississippi that includes another bracelet that was found in an antique shop. tion to killed in action, a general notification went out on different websites about the change in his status.
“Since I was listed as the primary next of kin I got a flood of those bracelets because apparently it was tradition that once the person’s remains were found and their status changed that you’d send the bracelets to the family,” she says, saying the bracelets came from all parts of the United States. Accompanied with the bracelets were letters and notes of sympathy and people explaining how they felt a connection to Capt. Finney.
“It was very moving,” she says. Her father, who served in the Marine Corps, was flying in an A-6A aircraft on a night armed reconnaissance mission over Laos, when he went missing on March 17, 1969. Just 24 years old at the time, his status was chaged from MIA to KIA, killed in action, in April 1978, when he was also posthumously promoted to a Major.
In the late 1990s a search of the crash site turned up remains that were identified as Capt. Finney’s. His remains were buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Asked if her father’s burial in Arlington National Cemetery brought closure, his daughter, a Navy veteran feels that moment came instead four years ago in what she refers to as a celebration of his life in 2014. A retired Marine who sells antiques and frequents antique shows was wandering around the booths of a show in South Dakota when something caught his eye – it was a Capt. Church Finney 3-171969 bracelet.
“The lady at that particular booth didn’t know what it was or what it was for and he said, ‘I do,’” she says.
The man, Frank Walker, went on a mission to find Finney’s family, that with help from others eventually culminated in a memorial dedication at the Tupelo Veterans Museum in Mississippi on Memorial Day in May 2014. Sims says it was a special day shared with family and new friends. The bracelet found on the Meteghan beach by Louisette Saulnier and Odette Thibodeau.
“When his remains were found it brought closure but celebrating him that Memorial Day was the really meaningful day,” she says, adding a book is now being written about her father. She’s forwarded a request to receive her father’s entire service record and the investigation into the crash of his aircraft to aid in the writing of the book.
Sims says she’s heard from others who have worn Capt. Chuck Finney bracelets and has heard stories from people who knew him.
“There are just a lot of really great people who are connected with these bracelets,” she says, recalling one such man telling her the story about how he was one of the enlisted personnel who would pick up officers and drive them to their aircraft.
Some of the officers weren’t so talkative.
That wasn’t the case with Capt. Finney.
“He said my dad always asked how he was, always took time to talk to him and was really genuine and he would never forget that,” she says. “That was great to know about my dad.”