Weeks earlier, the two businessmen had called Decker to tell her they had found one of her son's dog tags during a visit to Vietnam and wanted to return it. "I was just overwhelmed," says Decker. "If I had tried to plan this, it wouldn't have worked out nearly like it did. It was such a beautiful, beautiful day."
The making of that day began last January, when Gain, 49, president of a shipping firm, and Stiff, 27, who manufactures magic tricks, were scouting possible business sites for their companies in Vietnam. The two had been friends since Stiff started renting office space from Gain about two years ago. Shopping off the beaten path one day in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), they stumbled upon a vendor selling war spoils: hats, boots, helmets, badges, flags, medals, letters and signed postcards. But what caught their eye was hundreds of military dog tags hanging on a wire.
"It was almost ghoulish," says Gain, who asked the seller if the dog tags were real. "I remember from my father being in the military that the dog tag was pretty sacred. And his military number was something that we as kids had to memorize. When we went to school, they asked, 'What's your father's service number?' 'RA4214146.' We weren't even allowed to play with them. He always had them on."
Stiff was also spooked. "I grabbed Jim's arm," he says, "and we left."
But once Gain and Stiff got back to Orlando, they had a change of heart. "I started asking people I knew, 'Do you think we should go back and get them? Do you think the families would want 'em?' " says Gain. "Every answer was 'Yes.' "
Four months later, Gain and Stiff shelled out $6,000 to make a second trip to Vietnam. They started at the market where they had first seen dog tags, then expanded their search to two dozen more locations. "I could see that these dog tags didn't belong in these local, back-alley markets," says Stiff. When they finished three days later, they had 620 dog tags, paying 2,000 Vietnamese dong—about 14 cents—apiece for them. Their reasons are complex. "We wanted to be patriotic, but I think there is a lot more to it," says Gain. "I felt bad that I wasn't in Vietnam."
Gain, who was born in Phoenixville, Pa., volunteered to be a helicopter pilot after graduating from high school in 1970. But he was turned down because he wears glasses. One of eight children of Robert, 75, who retired from the Army Security Agency in 1966, and Rosemary, 73, a homemaker, Gain cofounded PMG Worldwide, a freight shipping and storage firm in Orlando, in 1993. (His company helped tear down and store the sets for Independence Day and Titanic.)
Two years ago Gain met Stiff, a native of Livingston, N.J., through mutual friends. As a biochemistry student at the University of Florida, Stiff, the son of Richard, 48, an obstetrician-gynecologist, and Laura, 51, an assistant at his practice, had tried his hand at magic—but disliked working with kids. "I did tricks [for children's parties] in college, and the kids would beat up on me," he says. So he changed direction: Rather than doing magic tricks, he decided to manufacture them. In 1998 he started Magic Makers. When he mentioned to Gain that he needed logistical support for his products, Gain offered his expertise.
Last year Gain, who is married and has five children, aged 13 to 23, decided to meet his Vietnamese agent for the first time. Stiff, who is single, went along, looking for a possible site for a magic trick factory. While shopping for dresses for Gain's wife, Angela, and two daughters, they discovered the dog tags.
After their second trip, Gain enlisted his 13-year-old daughter, Alexandra, to organize the tags. She spent several days putting them into plastic bags and entering information on each into a computer. It proved a history lesson for her. Before then, "I just knew there was a Vietnam War, that's it," she says.
Gain and Stiff then began to search for the tags' original owners—or their families. Their first stop was the Internet, starting with virtualwall.org, where they could match up the name and service number of those killed and missing. They even launched their own site (founddogtags.com), hoping veterans who lost their tags would check it. And they turned to their local congressman, who helped them find Ruth Decker. "Their motives are pure," says Bryan Malenius, 29, who handles public affairs for Rep. Ric Keller(R-Fla.). "Not just anybody would go through all they've gone through to locate these folks."
But there have been skeptics. "We were uneasy about the fact that it's highly likely most of these dog tags are phony," says Larry Greer, 60, a retired Air Force officer now with the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office in Washington, D.C. "It's been a cottage industry [in Vietnam] to make these dog tags and sell them to tourists." Greer said an authentic dog tag should have the soldier's name, Social Security number, blood type and religion.
The question of authenticity haunts Gain and Stiff. "We sorted through thousands of dog tags [in Vietnam] which had gibberish on them," says Stiff. The ones they have returned had all the requisite information, he says, and were verified by the recipients. For example, Gary Teller, 52, who served in an Army supply unit, is certain the dog tag he received is the one he lost in 1969 because the letters giving his religion—"Protestant"—were stamped unevenly on it. "After all those years, I remembered that," he says.
Former Army combat engineer Larry Turner, 51, is also certain that a dog tag Gain and Stiff found is his. He lost it, he says, when he became hung up on some barbed wire in the Mekong Delta. Now an equipment operator in the Port Orange, Fla., public works department, Turner cried when he received it. "It was very emotional," he says.
Gain and Stiff have so far spent $9,000 of their own money to return 52 tags, a price they are willing to pay. Says Stiff: It's saying 'Thank you' for sacrificing for every bit of freedom we have today."
Veronica Byrd
Don Sider in Orlando
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