Another half hour of Hattebergs People is queued up and ready to roll.

Coming up, the place was Peking, China.

The year was 1979.

Governor Carlin was there on a trade mission and I was invited to come along.

Well, you'll see what I discovered there and why it's relevant to every one of us more than four decades later.

Also.

I love my life in Kansas.

It is everything I have ever wanted.

Actor Willie Ames left Hollywood and cleaned up his act.

In 1994, he was thankful to just be alive and living a healthy life in Kansas.

You'll learn how he ended up here and then what happened to him in the years since.

Plus, you come in here and for a while you become a part of their lives.

There are secrets here.

John Fredin and Kim Weigand were on a mission to investigate Kansas ghost towns.

Find out what they were looking for and what they were hoping to accomplish way back in 1985.

And-- This is our 2,212th get together on Sunday in our 43rd year.

He was a Hall of Fame broadcaster and a radio man from way back.

See how his quiet suburban home doubled as a sound studio for one of the longest running radio shows in Kansas history.

We'll have those stories and more.

Hello, I'm Susan Peters.

And I'm Larry Hatteberg.

Take another trip with us across Kansas through the generations as we rewind and revisit those faces from the past, also known as Hattebergs People.

These stories are like old friends.

Their lives radiate from the screen, like prophets of the past.

They were teachers, but not in a classroom.

Instead, they taught about life to those around them who cared to listen and I was their student.

Theres only one alternative to getting old, and that's a universal truth, no matter who you are or where you live.

Yeah, different cultures have different ways of dealing with old age.

Now, in 1979, I got the chance to visit China with Kansas Governor John Carlin.

On that trip, I got an up close look at the way Chinese society at that time looked after its aging population.

This is a retirement home in Peking, China.

The year 1979, clapping is a Chinese custom that welcomes visitors.

The occasion was Governor John Carlin's trade mission to the People's Republic of China and as expected, the Chinese culture is vastly different from our own.

Retirement homes reflect Chinese thinking regarding the elderly members of their society.

There are 63 people living in this retirement center.

The requirement for admission to a Chinese retirement home is that there be no living relative to care for the aging person.

In Chinese society, the extended family is the norm.

The elderly are part of the home, part of everyday life, and are not relegated to someone else's care.

Retirement homes like this one are for those senior citizens who are totally alone with no family to provide for their care.

In China, retirement age is 60 for men and 55 for women.

For these people, the government pays 85% of their previous working wage.

It is a form of Social Security.

As you can tell by these films, this Chinese retirement center is not the polished tile floors or the gleaming stainless steel or the cool fluorescent lighting that's normally associated with American retirement centers.

This home reflects the Chinese culture.

Compared to our standards, they are poor.

There are, however, things that Americans can learn from the Chinese, and one of those is the return of the extended family, a family where several generations live and work together under one roof.

The older take care of the younger.

The younger, then take care of the older.

In China, the extended family still works.

I'm Larry Hatteberg.

And that is something more.

Well, China has changed a lot since 1979.

But back then, it was fascinating to see, as you just saw in that story, how they took care of their older people.

They didn't want them to be alone if they didn't have any other family.

And that's such a that's very nice.

And I'm sure it's still true today.

But the thing about that story is the thing that impressed me is how the Chinese back then anyway and I'm sure like it might be still true today value their elderly they want to keep them at home they want to take care of them way into their old age, which is something we could here in America maybe take a little bit of a lesson from.

We can always learn from what other people are doing.

All right.

Former child actors living troubled lives, addicted to drugs and alcohol, that's a real life storyline that has played out over and over again.

It's almost surprising when you find a young performer who isn't in the throes of dependency and the trouble that goes along with it.

Yeah, the pressures and the temptations faced by young stars are easy to understand.

Well, back in 1994, I met a famous child star who had fled the decadent Hollywood culture to find sobriety and normalcy right here in Kansas.

Look at my shirt.

Hey.

Playing the role of Tommy Bradford in eight is enough is probably how you remember Willie Ames.

This is probably not.

I moved to the Midwest and put on about 28 pounds.

The Midwest is Olathe.

33 year old Willie lives here with his actress wife Maylo and his daughter, Harley.

Now it's eight oclock!

You know, three years ago, I wouldve said you were nuts.

I looked at you like you had three heads.

Oh, Kansas wasn't even a word that we had ever said.

Did we know how to pronounce it?

When we got here, it was like nobody-- Spent a lot of time in the DMV going “K-Kan-- ” “Kansas.

” Willie is a fifth generation Californian whose love of the ocean is only matched by his love for deep sea fishing.

Everybody wants to know if I love the ocean so much.

Why Kansas?

I just tell them it's the dirt version of the ocean.

Oh!

With the three year old underfoot, the day begins.

Oh.

I got to go.

I got to go.

Bye bye.

Bye.

See you.

Morning, folks.

Willie is vice president of VPR Creative Group in Overland Park, an award winning company on the cutting edge of interactive video presentations.

If you need information on how to contact your legislator.

Willie is a survivor.

He's successful, has a loving family.

But came so close to failure.

They lost my pulse three times.

We spend all day.

Watching his old show, Aames says memories are a little foggy.

He was on cocaine, a rebellious kid who fell to the vices of Hollywood.

No matter what I bought, no matter what I did, no matter what drugs I took, no matter who I slept with and on and on and on and on and on.

I could never satisfy anything inside.

As I was sitting in the jungle in Venezuela, doing a movie, doing huge amounts of cocaine, and I was reading the book Wired, the John Belushi story, and I realized that what I was really reading was my story.

The only difference was I hadn't died yet.

I can't forget to take the trash out either.

Huh?

This Willie Aames changed.

He got help for his addiction.

Found a religious base for his life, and moved to Kansas.

Somebody ought to fix that.

Willie hopes his story will help others who may be on the brink.

But I was very angry and wanted to feel as though I was a part of something.

And quite honestly, I wanted to be somebody's hero.

And I have that in in my wife.

I think that's why my second marriage is so good.

I love coming home to Kansas so much, and my wife loves it.

And the more dirt, the better.

There is a peace about not having to keep up.

And I've been keeping up for almost 30 years.

I love my life in Kansas.

It is everything I ever wanted.

Unfortunately, not long after that, Willie went back to drugs and alcohol.

Maylo divorced him, and he ended up homeless.

At age 47, though, he once again cleaned up his act.

He got a job on a cruise ship, and in 2014, he remarried a woman who had been writing him letters.

And now Willie has returned to acting and speaking about his Christian faith.

He recently starred in a Hallmark movie based on how he and his wife met and fell in love.

Okay.

I love the ending to that story.

Sure.

Addiction is so, so hard to break.

But I love that ending.

And actually, it hasn't ended yet because Aames recently attended the funeral of his former Eight is Enough costar Adam Rich, who we all know had the same problems that Willie had.

Adam Rich died of a drug overdose at age 54.

But we're just very, very happy that Willie's story turned out a lot differently.

I always like happy endings, and it took a while.

But this one has one.

Many Kansas communities are thriving and keeping up with the latest trends in culture and technology.

But others are a little more than crumbling ruins inhabited only by ghosts.

In 1985, John Fredin and Kim Weigand were traveling the state, investigating old abandoned towns, pondering what was and investigating what remained.

Before we leave here, we want to make sure we go across the road and get a picture of that school.

Yeah.

Jon Fredin and Kim Weigand are walking through the remains of Etna, Kansas.

They've researched 142 Kansas ghost towns and photographed 50 of them.

Go ahead and go in and I'll hand it to you.

I step into a place like this, and I begin to imagine the kids, the husbands, the wives, the grandparents who used to live here.

When that sun shines brightly, it makes a beautiful pattern on that wall.

There its even more intense.

There you go.

That's as good as it's gonna get.

You come in here and for a while you become a part of their lives.

There are secrets here.

There are closets.

And, you know, I wonder what these people did.

I wonder why they left.

And I know that ultimately they cannot have been that much different than I am.

Jon and Kim believe that the photographs they take are like a piece of literature.

So if you look at them long enough, they'll tell you something about yourself.

I get a sense primarily of my own past.

I actually feel more alive sometimes in a place like this, silly as it sounds, because I lived not only the life I had today, but through a lot of other people.

I live their lives.

I think what I would have done had I been there.

I think what I'm going to do in the future.

I wonder about them.

I wonder about myself.

And I see myself in relationship to all of this.

I would like to see what this town looked like in its heyday, 1920.

Somewhere in there.

I have gotten a fascination for looking through windows and photographing through windows, looking in to the lives of these people.

You're on the outside.

There's a curiosity that keeps going.

It's like a natural museum.

You feel like a peeping tom in a way to this world that you'll never be a part of in your just every day life.

Their book will contain poems and pictures of towns like Etna.

Writer Andy Brown will also contribute to the project and what they hope to accomplish is to give readers more emotion and feeling about these towns than the historical aspect of them.

Okay.

You wouldn't dream a place like this ever existed.

No.

A lot of people drive by here and don't even know it's here.

They don't know what's here.

The town may be gone, but the feelings are still there.

This is Larry Hatteberg.

Well, John and Kim's relatives say the book was never written, and they're not exactly sure why.

And we can't ask John or Kim because they both passed away, John in 2000 and Kim in 2013.

But for a period of time, they were fascinated with these old, abandoned little ghost towns in Kansas.

I am fascinated with abandoned towns.

There's so much history and wealth of culture in these abandoned towns.

I am just very sorry that book was not written because I would definitely be on it.

But I'm sure there are other books written by about Kansas Ghost Town, so I'm going to go searching for them.

Well, good for you.

But not everything in life goes to plan.

The way we planned.

No, I wish it did.

I know if that were the case, our lives would be perfect.

They would be perfect.

And then much more interesting.

Or maybe more boring.

All right, everybody, we've seen all forms of local media evolve over the past several decades.

Almost all newspapers and local TV and radio stations are owned and micro-managed by mega-corporations based out of state.

It didn't used to be that way, but this next story is about a man who persevered through many of those changes.

And in 2006, he was still doing an old fashioned radio show from his basement.

Well, it's Sunday, and that means it's time for the Merle Blair Sunday Show.

Welcome to my morning.

Song: Welcome to my morning.

Welcome to my day... Merle Blair's house sits in a tree lined Topeka neighborhood.

Song: This way...

This is our 2,212th get together on Sunday in our 43rd year.

And downstairs, way downstairs, through the rec room, the office, then the storage room, past the furnace and left at the wall is a studio where he has created a lifetime of radio shows.

Someone once told me when I got in the radio business, that if you don't think you're doing something special, then you shouldn't be in it.

Song: Never know how much I love you...

It's been 43 years of a radio show done in Merle Blair's Topeka basement.

Merle Blair on Sunday from eight to noon in our 43rd year.

Blair spent years in radio, even becoming a general manager, but when he left the business, he didn't leave his basement show.

I enjoyed doing it.

I mean, it's it's fun to sit down and I go for a whole hour.

I don't voice track.

I play the music.

Nothing fancy here.

No computers, no CDs, just records.

Real LP's and Merle.

Our get together this hour on a Merle Blair Sunday made possible by John Levan and Lindy spring systems.

Listeners have to realize that I wouldn't really be here if all those sponsors werent here.

His show airs in Topeka on KTOP AM every Sunday from 8 a.m. until noon.

It could be the longest running independent radio show in the nation.

I get a lot of comments from people over the years and they don't realize how important that is because, you know, if no one's out there, then there's no use doing.

For Merle Blair.

Someone has always been there and after 43 years, it appears he'll always be here too.

You know what we feel about you for being with us all these 43 years?

Song: I love you more and more every day... Al Martino... Now Merle continue doing his weekly radio show up until his death in 2016.

He was 80 years old when he passed.

I love that... We would still be listening to him if he hadn't passed.

And those old time things, those old radio shows, there's something to be said about them.

They are.

And he had a great following up there when I was up there and the phone would ring while he was in between records and stuff and hed talk to people.

That's great.

Small town.

That he had a following.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

I love.

That.

Yeah.

Okay, let's go back to 1977.

Larry and I would be out disco dancing until all hours of the night.

Not really.

That was really bad if you were out dancing and you did that.

No.

Oh, man, that's embarrassing.

I do my best.

I do.

I know you do.

Well, James McCartney would be burning the midnight oil as well, cleaning up the messes that others left behind.

But as you'll see right here, James approached his work with pride and purpose, and he has a timeless message for all of us.

He's always busy cleaning, dusting, mopping or waxing some portion of City Hall.

To the aristocrat, his job may seem inconsequential, but his philosophy on living and working is one from which we could all take lessons.

I believe that you could do any job with dignity.

Number one, I don't have to feel bad because I'm earning a living, honestly.

You see, I don't pull no tricks and do anything dishonest.

Whatever I make, I could go to bed with a clear conscience.

No.

As many jobs that have a higher status in life put you in a higher position.

People recognize you as, you know, higher.

But they do a whole lot of things as undercover.

That's wrong.

But indeed my job is very little to do due to, you know, I don't have to steal anything.

You know, it, like I said, they tell me to do something.

If I want to be fair of myself and fair with them, I just go ahead and do it and have a good conscience.

A deeply religious man, McCartney says his philosophy is simply to stay right with God.

At home, Jimmy has 12 children, ranging in age from 42 to 10 years old.

This particular evening, some nieces and nephews were also on hand for the family dinner.

I'm doing that.

I take pride in raising my family.

I love my wife and my children, and I don't think there's nothing too good for them.

And many times I worked two and three jobs at a time, but I didn't feel bad about I felt like that was something that I had to do.

And I learned to enjoy working.

That's the reason that I'm like, I am on this job.

Anything they asked me to do, I figure thats part of my days work.

And I got 8 hours to work and they said, Jimmy, I want you to mop the floor, I mop the floor.

They want you to brush walls, wash walls.

And that and that way I figured I don't give them no problems and they don't give me none.

Jimmy McCartney, the man who finds walking in the tunnel of life a joy, no matter where that life leads.

This is Larry Hatteberg.

Now, James retired from the city back in 1981.

He passed away in 1988 at age 71.

Do you know wed never know about James and his life if it wasn't for Hattebergs People?

And these are people that we need to know about.

We need to know that not everybody, of course, not anybody has a perfect life.

But if you look on social media, on television, oh, everybody's so pretty.

Everybody has a perfect life and does it all.

Look at my kids and all of that.

And and we need to know about people like James who live a humble, wonderful life, who contribute so much to society and really us, but are never noticed.

That's right, there are so many people working quietly behind the scenes.

They don't send out press releases.

They don't care if anybody knows what they do.

They're just happy doing what they do.

And sometimes it's great.

Not sometimes all the time.

It's great to hear about it.

It is.

And I'm and I'm glad you told you are telling their story.

And by the way, not to get to.

God loves them just as much as He loves the beautiful people on social media.

Like you said.

Maybe even more.

Maybe even more.

I dont know.

Alright.

Also in 1977, young Bill Moss worked hard and tried to make it fun at the same time.

Yeah, Bill had a really groovy way of delivering newspapers.

Now, I tried to follow him on his route through Wichita neighborhood, but it was not easy just trying to keep up.

Thomas Edison liked to read at night, so he invented the light bulb.

Benjamin Franklin had cold feet, so he made a pot bellied stove.

And Alexander Graham Bell got tired of yelling.

So he developed the telephone.

Well, 14 year old Bill Moss has better things to do on a spring day than deliver newspapers.

So he dug out his skateboard.

Song: Sidewalk surfing with me... (song continues) Bill and his skateboard have become familiar sights every day after school, soaring down the streets, avoiding the many cracks and crevices in the sidewalks.

But as with most good ideas, there are still a few bugs to iron out.

(song continues) Bill Moss, a living example that necessity is the mother of invention.

This is Larry Hatteberg.

Now, Bill, delivered the Wichita Eagle for a few years.

And then he moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas, to live with his sister.

He says he worked a number of jobs but fell in with the wrong crowd.

He turned to drugs and alcohol.

But Bill eventually did clean up his act and became a drug counselor.

He is now 60 years old.

He is not skateboarding anymore.

Says he never was very good at it anyway.

Larry.

Okay.

First of all, that story was incredible that you could barely keep up with them as a youngster.

But second of all, to hear the updates on these people, it is so impressive.

And that's something our producer Jim Grawe does magically, finds updates.

Where are these people now?

And it's very gratifying to be able to not only present your incredible stories, but tell you where they are these days.

Well, it's fascinating to see what happens in people's lives.

And sometimes they go down a bad road.

Right.

The good news is many of them make a U-turn.

And he's a drug counselor.

Counselor now.

After going through drugs, I mean, this is that's a wonderful change.

And we should congratulate him for it, because that's very special.

Addictions very, very hard.

Congratulations to him for being a drug counselor and beating addiction.

It's a very hard disease.

But I also love that we saw the good and the bad updates, and I'm glad this one turned out to be good.

Hey, guess what?

That's a wrap for this week.

We hope you enjoyed the show.

We enjoyed bringing it to you, but you can let us know.

So you can send us an email and then be sure to join us again next week for more stories about Kansans from the past that have never been told anywhere else.

I'm Susan Peters.

And I'm Larry Hatteberg.

Thanks for watching.

We'll see you again soon.