While holidays often inspire people to rekindle relationships, this Christmas season prompted one Warren County woman to wonder about a man she always wanted to meet.

It was too late.

Cindy Curry Stokes was seeking Bruce C. Mahr, who was a soldier in Vietnam in 1970 when he received one of the essential-needs packages that Stokes and other local Girl Scouts sent to Southeast Asia as part of a troop project.

Bruce M. Mahr, the soldier’s son, said that his father returned safely from the war, but died in a December 1990 car wreck after retiring from the Army as a lieutenant colonel.

Still, Stokes’ rediscovery of the Christmas Eve 1970 thank-you letter that she received from the Mahr in Vietnam provided her with a reminder of the morale boost that can be given troops by simple letters and gifts from home  — even if they’re from complete strangers.

“Especially now, it’s just so important that they understand that we love and support them, especially at Christmas,” Stokes said.

The recipient of Stokes’ 1970 gift package was serving in one of the most unpopular phases of one of the United States’ most unpopular wars. As a district adviser in the hinterlands of South Vietnam, the elder Mahr was part of an effort to train and modernize the beleaguered country’s defense forces in order to facilitate an American withdrawal from the region. Mahr’s son said that his father had to attend a six-month Vietnamese language course in Washington, D.C., as training for the job, which constituted his second tour of duty in the conflict.

The loneliness of the assignment is evident from Mahr’s thank-you letter to Stokes. “We do not get to the PX (an Army-run store) very often,” Mahr wrote. “There are only nine Americans living here and we are pretty far from everything. This makes your gifts very special to us.”

The gifts, Stokes said, were everyday items — razor blades, socks, toothbrushes and the like.

Mahr sent his thank-you letter to the local chapter of the American Red Cross, which helped run the so-called “ditty bag” program. Upon realizing that the note was for the Girl Scout who sent the package, the Red Cross forwarded it to Stokes. “The letter is such a nice one,” read the letter from the local chapter’s executive director. “I am sure that you will treasure it.”

But, as Stokes said this week, “things that you know are important at 40 or 50 don’t seem as important when you’re 10.” And so the letter from Mahr stayed with Stokes’ mother, who died in January 2007.

It was not until recently, when Stokes’ niece asked to have something from her grandmother, that Stokes found Mahr’s note. Upon discovering it, she immediately began wondering what happened to her long-ago correspondent.

While saddened by the nature of Mahr’s death, she was heartened to learn that he had returned safely to the United States.

According to Bruce M. Mahr, his father retired from the Army to teach ROTC in Lubbock, Texas, but subsequently decided to move to Neosho, Mo., after seeing an house that he liked while vacationing in that town.

The elder Mahr was running an antique business in Neosho — “my father loved to work with his hands,” his son said — at the time of the fatal 1990 car accident, which also killed his second wife and one of his grandchildren.

Mahr’s mother had also moved to Neosho before his death, and Bruce M. Mahr moved to the town to care for her after the accident. He’s currently an official at a Neosho bank and also serves as president of the local school board.

“I’m glad to know that he made it back and got to see his family again,” Cindy Stokes said.

Stokes said that her memory of sending gifts to Vietnam also affirms the value of the Girl Scouts.

“They do the kinds of things that it’s good for young people to do in their spare time,” Stokes said. “What we were doing back in 1970 is just a really good example of that.”

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Contact Ben Bryant at bbryant@vicksburgpost.com.