PROVO — Nicknamed "Lucky" during his seven years in Hanoi as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, Larry Chesley found another source for the series of life-sustaining miracles he experienced.

Even during the darkest days, when he was racked with pain unless he passed out briefly, experienced stretches of three or four sleepless days and lost 65 pounds, "never once did I say I wanted to die," Chesley said. "I didn't want to die. I wanted to come home, and I knew with God's help, I would."

Chesley — a retired lieutenant colonel who later served as a state senator in Arizona and authored a book on his POW experiences — was the keynote speaker at Thursday night's Utah Valley National Day of Prayer Commemoration at the Provo LDS Tabernacle.

Prayers and scriptures were offered by leaders of a number of different faiths, including Seventh-day Adventist, Hare Krishna, United Church of Christ and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Prayer trees were stationed outside several of the tabernacle's entrances and at the front of the rostrum.

When his jet was shot down on April 16, 1966, on the 76th of his required 100 missions, Chesley — a member of the LDS Church — broke three vertebrae while ejecting, eventually regaining consciousness while parachuting to the ground before being stripped to his underwear and socks after being captured.

Anticipating a long hike, he first prayed for his boots — they were returned within a minute. He later in prison saw fellow prisoners who were forced to hike barefoot — "the meat was stripped off the bones of their feet," he recalled.

At one time during his 21-day delivery from his capture point to Hanoi, Chesley said prayers when he suffered from paralysis from the waist down and had no feeling in his arms and hands, when he was being constantly beaten by a ruthless guard, and when he was tied awkwardly and painfully in the back of a transport truck.

Feeling was restored in his body, he never saw the guard again, and the knot in the rope loosened — "within 24 hours, I had asked for three little, simple things, and God had given me all three," he said.

Other instances of answered prayers included an established form of tap-code communications — "really, truly a godsend" — among U.S. prisoners and the time his cellmate, Jim Ray, threw out a guard that was attacking Chesley.

He and his roommate prayed before and after an English-speaking guard acknowledged the broken rule of attacking a guard and the impending punishment. The next day, the punishment given to Ray was simply standing in a corner for one minute.