19-year-old Bryce Lacey is a student at Sam Houston State University. He went home to see his dad, Charles for the weekend. Charles is a Vietnam veteran, and the two started looking at photos from his dad’s time in the army.
One man was a constant in almost every photo, and his name was Kermit Powers.
Charles said the two friends tried to stay in touch after the war, but without the tools we have today like Facebook and texting, it was harder to keep a friendship alive. It’s been 40 years since the two last spoke.
So, Bryce decided to take matters into his own high-tech hands and took to social media to try and see if he could reunite the long lost pals.
He posted a photo of them and some information and it’s been shared over 55,000 times.
And you KNOW the internet pulled through.
The first clue turned up when someone found a 2004 obituary for Evelyn Kelly Powers that also mentioned her son, named Kermit.
Someone else found a LinkedIn account that only had his full name, a status of retired and a location of Germany.
Germany was a common theme in the rest of the discoveries, which were mainly more social media accounts that had not been utilized very much.
A Facebook account even showed a picture of what looks like the same guy in a military uniform. The profile even had a German phone number, but when Bryce called, it went straight to voicemail.
The internet refused to give up. People started suggesting other ways of finding Powers, such as reaching out to his family members and more.
Something must have worked, because Bryce finally hit the jackpot! He actually received a message from the inactive Kermit Powers Facebook account. Powers told him that he’d been looking for Charles since they fell out of communication and gave Bryce a Skype name and email on which to contact him.
Bryce finally talked to Powers on Skype and they set up a video call for him and Charles today.
Good job, internet. You get all of the points.
