 Now on to the main event. After the video we will have a special introduction from an AY18 Eagle, Colonel retired Ken Cordier who was a Vietnam POW alongside this morning's first honoree. When he went through basically combat survival training, he remembered talking with an instructor about a tap code that World War II prisoners used and so just by chance he happened to learn about that and he was taken into captivity. He taught it to a couple of the other guys that were there and as they moved around the prisons in Vietnam they'd spread like wildfire and became a very key lifeline for them to communicate. Just watching him, he got more emotional thinking about how she was while he was in captivity and I'll never forget just very powerful, very emotional. So he started out enlisted and decided he wanted to fly so he got commissioned cross training to F-105s and did a couple of combat tours over Vietnam and it was shortly thereafter I believe it was the second tour that he was shot down and he was a POW for about seven years so one of the longer POWs over there came home during Operation Homecoming. Reunited with his family, his son who he had never met, who was born after he was taken into captivity There's two daughters. It was actually very humbling to speak with him because he does not consider himself a hero He does not consider himself worthy of being considered an eagle and which absolutely just astounds me because he and his wife are both incredible. The things that he kind of talked about like I said doing things for the patriotic, you know sense of duty and sense of country that that resonates with me because for a lot of what we do I mean we've known nothing but war since you know my peer group commissioned the optimism, particularly in my line of work when we talk about force support and taking care of the people and the families in the airmen. It's important to me that we provide them with some kind of positive view of the Air Force and that's really what he maintained was the situation is what you make of it you can either kind of wallow in it or you can maintain that hope and he definitely did. The fact that he and his wife took us out to lunch and treated us to all these things like we were the ones that were important I'll never forget that easily the best moment of ACSC for me Good morning It isn't a great to be alive and free It's a privilege and an honor to introduce Smitty Harris one of the most important and influential fellow POWs I served with in Hanoi during the Vietnam War Our early years in prison were very difficult We were forbidden to speak in audible tones and never permitted books or writing materials We were locked up 24-7 and were forbidden to exercise The windows were all bricked up because it was forbidden to ever see other POWs Aligned from fellow POW Brad Smith's poem goes like I've nothing left but memories the rest they stripped away in other words. We had absolutely no freedom We were all tortured to sign war crimes confessions and to condemn the US presence in Vietnam Against this background of total repression It was critical to be in contact with other POWs for mutual support and to organize our resistance against that unrelenting enemy Back in the 60s the Air Force Combat Survival School at Stead Air Force Base was located near Reno, Nevada After a day of lectures and exercises many of us would drive into Reno to gamble sin and drink Not a good lifestyle to get the most out of the next day of training Well, Smitty stayed on base Wrote a letter home and went to bed early every night This paid enormous dividends when we got to Hanoi During POW training the instructor mentioned that in the German POW camps Prisoners would communicate between barracks by tapping on the metal water pipes which supplied water to the separated prisoner compounds After class Smitty asked the instructor, how are they able to tap dashes the instructor replied that they didn't use Morse code, but rather a 5x5 matrix code leaving out one letter unfortunately the letter K and Once you see this you can easily remember the key and Smitty did by the way my initials are KC They left out the K and guys always spelled my name wrong a couple of years later Smitty was shot down captured and had a brief opportunity to be with the other five prisoners in early 1965 He used this time to teach them the tap code The code was then passed on to other POWs as they were brought to the Hanoi Hilton and other prisons It became the single most significant tool to enable us to keep in contact for mutual support and Enable our senior officers to provide leadership and guidance The camp authorities eventually learned that we were somehow communicating which of course was strictly forbidden Unfortunately, one of the guys got Careless and was caught tapping on the wall He was taken to interrogation and after denying that he was tapping on the wall they put him in the rope torture until he broke and Revealed the name of the guy in the next cell That guy in turn was tortured to give the name of the man in The cell next to him and so on until they discovered that the entire camp was connected and communicating The men who were tortured paid a heavy price But the positive outcome was that they did it they the Vietnamese did a complete shuffle of the entire camp And we all got new roommates Can you imagine the frustration of being locked up 24-7 with one or two other men? It doesn't take long until you've heard all his stories and then they start over and over So our communication that was a great boon to our survival both physical and mental Now I think you can appreciate how much we owe to Smitty Harris For giving us the means to communicate and support each other in the most difficult circumstances we could ever imagine Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome my friend and comrade colonel Carlisle Smitty Harris And accompanied by his wife Louise Smitty it's such a pleasure to have you guys here today and Ken. Thank you for the beautiful introduction to talk about What Smitty has provided to his significant contribution to air and space power and Without further ado Smitty for sure. Thank you. I Am so honored. We are so honored to be here as an eagle And I know that the reason I was selected to be an eagle is that I represent Vietnam POWs their achievements and conduct During our incarceration in North Vietnam So but it's such an honor to be here and represent that group I have such great pride in being a part of that Resistance to our captors in North Vietnam My talk today of course is going to be about some of my POW experience and My bonding with the men with whom I served There weren't specially picked to be POWs. It just happened and I respect our armed forces because all of the people in all our services We do the utmost that they could to represent their country and to do anything they could in Their ability to do the things that they thought they should do It was a challenge but we took it on willingly because we had Such a background of love for our country and our service and the men with whom we served Here's a story. I'll tell you back in the early days of 1965 I Was flying the F-105 Thud as we call it F-105 fighter bomber and the target was a large bridge in north vietnam I peeled in 45 degree dive my airspeed was perfect the altitude at which I pick on my bombs was perfect My sight picture was perfect. These were dumb bombs So you had to get everything just right up here for the bombs to hit where they should down there At the proper altitude I pick up off the bombs pulled out with a lot of G's hit after burn Or you get the heck out of there The anti-aircraft fire was horrendous that bridge was one of the most important arteries in north vietnam it had both vehicular and Rail traffic limit and sent supplies to the south to the vietnam as I pulled out Somebody shot a missile. I don't know its caliber But I took it out with my 105 It took out my 105 to It hit in the engine area it was single-engine airplane, of course Probably hit in the bottom of the aircraft and cut hydraulic lines and Communication cables and so on I tried to Advise my squadron that I had been hit, but they never received a message Very quickly the airplane the y'all damper system went haywire and that F-105 at about 600 knots Went whoo really y'all to the left and out of my peripheral vision I saw one of the big 450 gallon fuel tanks ripped from the airplane I hit the y'all damper button to Turn it off and was able to get a little bit of control of the airplane, but it was decelerating rapidly with no power and I was on fire and New and so I ejected from my burning aircraft. I Was captured immediately on the ground because I was so close to the target area the village Over which I found myself was directly below me and we could Still hear Following aircraft bombs and anti-aircraft guns going off. So the villagers were out looking those that weren't hiding and The first thing they saw Was me or my parachute. I was surrounded and captured immediately on the ground Mistreated immediately they pushed me up against a broken down brick wall that had been a building and Formed a little firing squad There was one particularly our eight of North fit and the means villager who was kind of a leader and he puts three of his Friends who had rifles about 15 feet in front of me And he walked up to me and put his finger right here Well, I had been stripped down to just my skivvy shorts And I knew what was happening And the only thing I could think was say a little prayer and stand as military as I possibly could And that's hard to do in your skivvy But at any rate some older men pushed in between My would-be executioners because the North Vietnamese were pretty disciplined and they had been asked to capture American politics alive for our value for interrogation purposes or Hostages or whatever later on We went I was taken to Hanoi to an old prison we called the Hanoi Hilton it had been built by the French in the probably the late 1850s And I was put in a small cell about excuse me about seven by seven had two Concrete platforms for beds on each side and at the end of each were Stocks where your ankles could be locked in a heavy wooden door with a peephole and In a light that stayed on 24 hours a day I was interrogated Immediately upon getting there they had a English and speaking interrogator Not very good English, but at any rate they wanted to know military information They wanted to know my squadron which aircraft carrier I flew from Of course, I was Air Force and but anyway Tactics future targets Any kind of information that I had that might be useful I Of course refused to answer those I gave him name rank Service number and date of birth and They didn't like that They knocked me off my stool Kicked me Threatened me with everything. They did not use torture at that time as we define torture, but I Took a pretty good beating several several times when I would say something about the Geneva Conventions or just give a main merit service number and date of birth They would get very angry. So those interrogation sessions really became an An opportunity for my English speaking interrogator to practice his English He started from the very beginning he talked a heck of a lot more than I did and He was telling me the history a wonderful history of North Vietnam and of their country and how long they had tried Not to be overcome by invaders or the Chinese or whomever and All about communism and the wonderful things that ensued to the people from their government It went in one ear and out the other We were American team. We knew what our freedoms were and what they had Didn't approach that as a matter of fact it opposed that so those indoctrination Sessions we said I sat on a stool for many hours at different times Listening to their propaganda. They were trying to brainwash us But they could not and that was similar for all the POWs Who were over there they they simply and And particularly a few months later when they really started The bad torture sessions Once one was tortured never again would you be likely to Not know who was right and who was the enemy and From then on you knew darn well you were going to resist Anything they tried to do to you or get from you Let me just a little bit about torture Understand that we weren't tortured all the time we were there They were great long periods where it was really bored them But when they wanted something from us sometime it was a camp wide Program they would come in and get each POW one by one and torture us by then We had no military information that was current enough to be of any value to them. So all they wanted was Submission they wanted us to submit to everything they told us and Then they would require us to write some statement and of course will be refused to do that But they used usually a Week or so of kind of softening you up by making you Forcing you to kneel or sit on a stool for days But not great great pain Deny you food and water sometimes, but finally they would do it. They would push you in tight ropes that Bound your head almost between your knees your hands tied behind you your elbows tied together and then they would lift your arms from the back and they would Create such intense pain you could only stand a few hours of that at most and you finally Knew you had to do something, but before we lost all ability to think and act When we finally said bow cow, I'm not sure how that translates, but that's what we were told to say when we wanted to communicate with them we would Maintain a second line of resistance We would finally be forced to write something Sometimes it took a few days before we could write the nerves in our arms and hands So so badly damaged but I remember I finally wrote a confession one time and It went something like this We American Air Pirates, that's what they call us criminal Air Pirates Followed the orders of our government with no remorse or regret that was my confession and of course At the high they accepted that they use the terms Criminal Air Pirate, but at the highest levels of government. They knew that That was not going to get by as something that came from a Logical reasoning POW So the truth is they made almost no effort to use those propaganda statements. They forced from us There was one exception that I know of a Navy pilot named Nells Tanner was tortured and forced to write a statement that people in his squadron were anti-war activists and had Influenced his squadron to refuse combat The reason they wanted that They wanted a statement to go to the war crimes tribunal in Stockholm headed by Bertram Russell, which was just a communist ploy and They wanted to show that American servicemen would not follow legitimate orders So Nells Tanner wrote in very straight English Exactly the story that two of his squadron mates had refused to he was Navy I had refused to fly combat adding had influenced his squadron not to fly combat They really like that letter. So they read it to the world in Stockholm at the War crimes tribunal The only problem was well, there were a couple problems one had it Nells Tanner get shot down If his squadron refused to fly combat Number two he named the two squadron mates There were the anti-war activists who had influenced the entire squadron. They turned out to be Dick Tracy and Clark Kent When that was read to the world Nells Tanner finally was Nailed and for a couple of years he got special bad treatment for embarrassing The North Vietnamese the communist world And on a worldwide scene in retrospect the torture was a huge mistake for the North Vietnamese Because all it did was harden us To resist whatever they were trying to get More and more we hated There are treatment and those who were giving it to us and we would never Submit to it. So in that way it backfired against them. Also They could never let an independent group of any kind the international Red Cross or anyone else interview any of us because They would get the wrong answers So we were we were never interviewed by friendly The Red Cross or anyone else so in that way They denied themselves the ability to get legitimate and believable propaganda which they so much desired Ken has talked about our capping on the wall and How it's spread like wildfire through our camps Because it was so important It was communication was so important between us because we had to know who was the senior ranking officer and With our communication we were able to find out what the North Vietnamese were trying to get out of each of us and Pass it along the North Vietnamese will try to play one POW W against another and Tell one POW that so and so told us something and Play us against each other, but with our communication. We knew that that was just a ploy We also were able to pass the information back and forth between ourselves and with Know who the senior ranking officer was and get Direction from him so we would have a common Effort when we went to interrogation to answer questions in a certain way for instance Also our communication system permitted us to get information from our family and friends back home and From our squadron mates Because from later shootdowns. I Had been there about six months when my squadron commander Luke colonel Robbie Ryzener came up to Hanoi to see me and see how I was doing and There were turned out there were six of my squadron who were POWs and I found out that my wife and Two little girls were living in Okinawa when I was sent over to karate air base to fly missions and I found out that my wife had a little baby boy Well just a month after I was shot down and that she was doing well and That she had gone back to the States and had chosen to live in Tupelo, Mississippi In the same town with her sister and their her husband and children I found that all out through our communication system It was it was wonderful to get that news from late shootdowns and also what was going on in the world series and All sorts of things back in the States I Cannot Overblow the importance of our communication with having a chain of command Increasing our morale Forming a brotherhood with our fellow POWs Increasing our resistance to the North Vietnamese Increasing our value systems when we were alone and being tortured or whatever else We knew at some point that we could not go on ourselves we needed help and We knew where to get that help We prayed when everything else failed we prayed And you know, we knew we had someone who was on our side and those prayers weren't Miracles that we wanted Did not happen immediately But we got things much more important Than what we asked for We knew we were not alone We had increased knowledge that Someone was there helping us and It increased our desire to live to go on to resist and come home To our own free country Where we could worship as we wanted to so we gained great values From that time and we maintain them today so That communication Part of it was when we were in those conditions When we would be finally dragged back to our cell Some as soon as the guard left and it was cleared the first thing that we would hear would be That's G. B. You in tecate God bless you We knew we had support from our friends and we shared our experiences with each other to We knew it would be valuable To them to know how to resist and what we had done Our guidance was the armed forces code of conduct We tried our very best to maintain That code to do our best to follow that code and resist as best we possibly could and comply with the code at all times and Because we Followed the code and we resisted We knew that In our war with the North Vietnamese our personal war the POWs against our captors We came home with pride In our group in ourselves and with honor because we knew we had done the very best We could possibly do and we knew that we had won our war You know looking back we have no regrets We know the net effect on our lives has been positive from that experience we gained so much and The net effect on our lives has really been positive Thank you all and I'm gonna let Questions come and and please direct to my wife And me and we have a few minutes left so Go ahead Sir Scott Patton flight 21 can you explain to us how your time as a POW impacted? Your post POW Air Force career both professionally and your family Yes, they were so good to us when we came home initially We were interrogated by the good guys wanting to know names of all POWs That we possibly knew and if any information we could give them They gave us a very very thorough physical and took care of any problems. We might have and Gave us our choice of assignments if we were Capable of doing that some people Wanted to go back into flying positions and they got were able to do so if they were physically able I personally wanted to go to your war college to kind of catch up on what was going on in the world and in the Air Force and Kind of re-bluing back into service. So that was a great advantage I Guess we were treated so well and greeted so Wonderfully well when we came home With huge banners and people saying welcome home. It was a huge boost to our morale and almost We didn't expect that we knew that we had found out that many Vietnam veterans when they came back were very badly treated but when we came home the nation was almost in a euphoric stage of Something good to come out of the North Vietnamese war and The release of our prisoners was welcomed so much by everyone so We felt loved and cared for and were cared for by the armed forces and our families and we don't look back With any bad images in our minds. We just look forward to a happy and wonderful life in this great country Can you maybe tell us some of the tap code some others Oh the tap code I think most of the people here have learned it in some of their schools, but I'll give it to you very quickly Leave out the letter K the first line across and you could identify any letter in that line by tapping a Bcde was the first line then the second line Fgh ij the third line lmno queue But you didn't have to remember all of that Because you had to remember the first letter of each line AFL QV So you would identify which line Pause and then go over to the letter For instance the letter M would be AFL Lm the letter a would be the letter K One way we if we really needed K we use C for K mostly But if we really wanted to transmit a K we would go This is C This was just changed the Cadence and you knew it was okay, but there you have the tap code Back to the same mic again Thank you, sir for your service. It was a very powerful story to share and Had a question for your wife. What did the military do? During that time of your capture and what kind of support did she have? Actually, I had very good support except on a few occasions when I just had to Be as my teachers used to say a little cheeky and I had to just Demand certain things and I did I had great respect and great help from my casualty officers But as long as I was in Okinawa The squadron was wonderful to me and they they were Fighting on the that front over there but the wives and the and the squadron when they were back from rotation took great care of me truly and Helped me with the children and helped me as long as I was in Okinawa And I I stayed there until our son was born and then until he was six week up six weeks old and Colonel Cardenas who was the base commander later When commander excuse me, and then later general Cardenas He would come to my house if he had some information that was classified If necessary, he would bring it bring it to my house. I mean they were wonderfully kind and took great care of me when I got back to the States. I had a little trouble with Frankly the secretary of the Air Force and I had to demand he was just going to give me three hundred and fifty dollars of smithy's pay and I told him that I could not live on three hundred and fifty dollars and And support our children which was my husband's wish and the women in the audience who came to the tea yesterday Know this, but I just said I'm sorry I won't do that and I have the papers and I can sell the children if I need to I have to have our full Allotment and I have all the necessary documents to do that and he told me he'd get back to me in a week and I said no it will be this afternoon and He said well miss Harris I have to think about this because this is my policy and I said well I'm sorry, but my policy is that I have to have sleep because I have three babies and I Will have to have an answer by five o'clock this afternoon and to his credit He called me back before five o'clock that afternoon and said miss Harris. I've thought about it in your right and You will have your full Husbands full pay and a lot and I said thank you very much and I will not call a press conference after all I Mostly everything The only other time this was funny. I had been finally I moved four times to get a house that was livable in next door to my sister and I've been settled there happily for a while in the Air Force called and said we have a great deal for you We have housing available and I think it was mine off They wanted to send me to and take my housing allowance and I said Are you nuts? I said I'm I'm living next door on my sister in Tupelo, Mississippi in a wonderful house in a warm climate and you want to send me why not they said Oh, it's gonna be great They're gonna be a lot of wives there in the same situation you're in and I said forget it fella. I'm not going So but mostly everything they did and if I needed something I could call someone to say hey I need this if I had a situation I just found that if I call the top man available and said this is the way it's going to be they just said okay Tell them about your car you ordered one other story in the in the wives have heard this but While we were in Okinawa I had to sell the house that we had and also my car and they had a great program in Okinawa you could order a General Motors car over there and Have it delivered at any port in the country. You didn't have to pay tax and it was a great price So I ordered a stripped down Chevy wagon. I could afford that So it was supposed to be delivered in the Port of New Orleans Which was I could get on a trailways bus in Tupelo, Mississippi leave the kids with my sister and her teenagers and Go to the Port of New Orleans pick up the car and be home the same day, which was great with my sister She was not thrilled about having three little bitties running around. So anyway When I got the call That the port the car had come into the port I said, oh, that's wonderful My sister is really tired of me barring her car so they said and it's in the Port of Baltimore and I said oh no no it's supposed to be in the Port of New Orleans and They said sorry, it's in the Port of Baltimore click So I stooped over that for a little bit and so finally I thought mm-hmm General Motors car so I picked up the black rotary phones that we had back then and Call the mr. Estes who was chairman of the board of General Motors and I called him collect While talking over the operator to explain why I was calling him collect and he said who what in where and They usually said to pillow Mississippi But anyway, he finally said, okay, I'll just take the call So he did and he listened to my tale of woe and finally he said This Harris. I'm so sorry about your situation and he said Let me tell you what I'm gonna do. He said do you have a general molars dealer in Tupelo, Mississippi? And I said yes, I do and it's just down the corner turn right turn right again And and there he is and he said you go there and you give him my name and this code and my number and You pick out any General Motors station wagon on that lot and it's yours And I said well, I don't mind paying the difference. I've just got to have a car And he said you don't have to pay anything extra that car is yours Anyone you want on that lot that's a station wagon is yours courtesy of General Motors So I went down to George Ruff beautiful's and they had one Station wagon on that lot and it was a loaded Buick station And I got in that Hummer and I thank George Ruff and told him I was a General Motors customer and I drove that yellow Buick station wagon home and I drove the wheels off that car and It was wonderful. So I really found myself to be a very fortunate person over the years and People were very kind to me and I tried not to find it anybody But if I had a problem, I just said hey there, who are you top person and I went straight to Like life turned out pretty good particularly when I got this fellow back Did any of your friend POWs is trying to escape Yes, they did There were a few attempts but One incident two of our POWs It was obviously a planned escape because they had to Get they had prepared for days they got out of the camp they were captured immediately the next day and brought back camp and tortured to find out everything about the planning and Anything about anything that they want the earth Vietnamese wanted to know One of those men was tortured to death. His name was at a very The other's name was Dramisi. He survived but as a result of that escape attempt the North Vietnamese went to all the camps and tortured people in every camp to try to find out if we had other escape plans and So our leadership our senior ranking officers Passed the word out that there would be no more escape Attempts unless you had Knowledge Good knowledge that you were going to get outside support from our own forces or whatever but Continue with every effort to make escape plans so that can ever occur you'll be prepared so That's the answer to your question. There were no more escape attempts after that Hey, good morning. Thank you very much for coming sharing your story both of you. It's very inspirational You spoke a little bit about Finding out in captivity that you had a son could you go through the specifics of how you got that and the emotions you were Going through when you got that information. Oh It was wonderful Major Larry Guerrino who was in another squadron is the one who? Passed it through our communication system He was shut down. I think about three months after I was but he knew that a Wife in his sister squadron had given birth to a child and they were doing well and So he passed to me. He knew I had two daughters He passed to me that I had a son and the mother and son were both doing well it was months later after my squatter mates came there and Verified that Louise and our son were doing well And I finally got in communication again with Larry Guerrino and he confessed he's had smithy I Didn't know the sex of your child But I knew you had two daughters and I thought you'd want a son and I wanted to cheer And I wanted to cheer you up I For gave him What Who and while you were all detained as prisoners I had a significant effect on you to have your morale up during those torture sessions and what not and Was able to help provide that leadership through the prison system have the most significant impact on you You mean the names of some of our leaders or yeah So I remember we spoke briefly during the interview about During particular sessions that were challenging that you would be able to picture Robbie Reisner sitting next to you Can you speak to that a little bit? I had a wonderful squadron commander Karabiq Reisner he was a mig ace in Korea a Wonderful leader a Christian who lived his Christian life He was he was one of those people that if as soon as you met him You knew that he was a very very special person it just exuded confidence leadership and Just the kind of man that you would follow anywhere Oh He was he was really my idol I was a very senior captain soon to be major Which happened while I was a POW and I just looked up to Robbie Reisner He's the one that joined me six months later and in the Hanoi Hilton But in those early interrogation sessions sessions where they were getting pretty darn rough with me I Put a stool right beside my stool and I put Robbie Reisner on that stool in my mind and I tried to act as I thought Robbie Reisner would expect me to act That's how much respect I had for that man. We had wonderful leadership in North Vietnam and Stockdale Admiral Stockdale was one Jeremiah Denton. There were just lots of Men who stepped up and took a leadership role when it was their turn to do so or they were the senior ranking officer of Camp or finally a camp unity when we were all brought back to the Hanoi Hilton after the Sante raid in November of 1970, but we had wonderful leadership and We've wanted that and it made us feel as a unit It gave us a spree and we had a purpose of For being there That was pretty good. Yeah, I Think one other question that I'll ask and I think the audience is probably curious, but miss Louise how Once you got the news that Smitty was returning and coming back Can you guys both kind of share your experience of unifying your family and then also Smitty for you to meet Lyle for the first time? You go first Well, I Expected that the Air Force would send Louise to Hawaii And me to Hawaii when we came out and we would have a short time together To find out about what was going on in the family and whatnot to reunite it didn't happen that way We came from Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines landed at Travis Air Force Base in California And came to a base that was nearest to our home which happened to be Maxwell Air Force Base for me And there at 2 o'clock in the morning on February the 16th 1973 I was I guess there were about 15 or 20 of us on the airplane they were coming back to Maxwell because of the hospital facilities here and Our families were here and over in the boq and so at 2 o'clock in the morning I landed and because I was the senior person on that flight, of course, it's I came down the steps They were glaring lights and they put a microphone in front of me and I probably tried to say something appropriate I didn't know it, but right behind me a car had pulled up and I said just a brief couple of words I turned around and With the lights shining on me right into the Car and on the back seat That's when the first time I saw Louise She was in the back seat of that staff car and so I went around we jumped in and hug We went to the boq I didn't get to spend Any other time alone with Louise right then Because back at the boq My mother and father were there my brother Louise's mother and grandmother her sister and their two children Both our staff officers Who knows a medical officer a Chaplain I don't know. I thought there were a thousand people in that room frankly and our children But the two girls remembered me and they came up and of course hugged and On me and they were excited My I picked up my son he was almost eight years old and gave him a big hug He didn't hug back But that didn't bother me because I Knew he didn't know I was a total stranger He had never seen me before but after that He went over and I kind of lost track of what was going on because we were changing presents. I had bought in the Philippines a Bunch of nice Watches and Mickey Modo pearls for the ladies and so on and they had presents for me and we were changing them and I looked over in the corner and my son while I was sitting in an easy chair looking and I put my hands out like this He came and jumped up That's the total time it took for me to adjust to my family and my son and I'd never seen From then on we were just family We loved each other the kids we corrected them when they needed it They comply and we also And we gave them a lot of love and and care so it was a wonderful wonderful Homecoming for me. Thank you again. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all