It is a trip through the decades with stories preserved and now shared again.

These are the lives of Hattebergs people.

It's nice when you hear somebody say, Oh, I'm so glad you're here.

This helped us out in a way.

So that's a little encouragement.

Al Hernandez decided retirement wasn't for him, so he became a journalist.

See how his newspaper meant a lot to the underserved segment of the Wichita community.

Also.

Youre only here for a short period of time, so you might as well make the best of it.

What you make of life is what you enjoy, and that's what I do.

I just enjoy life and people and being around people, theyre what you call my family.

The lumber business had no better ambassador than Tony Venegas.

See the joy he got from helping customers and making every day a good day.

Plus.

People enjoy looking at them and I enjoy visiting with them to show what has been done as a nostalgic thing.

Everything old is new again.

In 1980, windmills were considered an old fashioned way to generate power.

But Fred Kale predicted they would make a comeback.

See that and then see this.

You've made me very happy for a long time, and I want to make you happy for the rest of my life.

Will you marry me?

This was one of the most original and memorable marriage proposals in Kansas history, no doubt.

And Susan and I were honored to have played a little role.

We'll revisit the excitement from 2010.

Hi, everybody.

I'm Larry Hatteberg.

And I'm Susan Peters.

Another half hour of Hattebergs People starts right now.

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.

Wichita has been a culturally diverse community, going back almost to the very beginning.

And while that can create challenges, it also creates great opportunities.

It does.

And for Alfonzo Hernandez, the opportunity was a way to keep busy during retirement and to do a service for an otherwise underserved segment of the population.

Yeah.

Makes you feel like you're doing something.

Al Hernandez has been editing the Hispanic newspaper El Perico for 12 years.

I'll be 76 this year.

Al is a quiet-spoken man who became editor of the paper with almost no formal training.

Ive always had to work hard all my life.

He had worked for railroads and packing plants until he retired.

Then he found he had nothing to do.

I don't have no hobbies to keep me busy.

Like a lot of them, they say “do this, you can learn ”.

Yeah, but I wouldn't learn good enough to do it as a hobby.

At home with his wife, Mary.

They recall those days when Al retired.

The first year was tough.

When he retired and we stayed that whole year.

I told me that you get out and find do volunteer work or I will go out and do it and you stay home and take care of the house.

First years, she said, God, do you want to know everything I'm going to do?

Who's on the phone?

Who's who came over and all that?

She said, I'm not used to that.

I wish you were doing something that'll keep you away from the house.

So I said, Well, rather than go to beer joints, find something to do.

And as long as I'm happy, he's happy.

Now he's happy.

It's nice when you hear somebody say, Oh, I'm so glad you're here.

This is helped us out in a way.

So that's that's a little encouragement.

A few other volunteers help Al out with some translating, but Al is the man who shepherds the paper to its monthly deadline.

He recently heard from a teacher who uses the paper in her class, in part, she told him.

Well, you know, we sure enjoy that paper.

And especially the kids in school, they get a kick out of.

I kind of think that I'm doing something to help the community.

Once a month, Al takes his paste-up copy to a printers in Belle Plaine.

Another month finished.

I'll call you just as soon as were finished with it.

El Perico is published because volunteer Al Hernandez chose to do something with his retirement years.

The Hispanic community wins and so does Al.

People that has moved away from Wichita have asked to have the paper mailed to them, and its going to 17 different states now.

Well, that was 1989.

Now, Al's wife passed away in 1999, and he died in 2002.

His newspaper, well, is no longer in operation, but there is a similar publication with a similar name that is published monthly.

It's called El Perico Informador y Parlanchin.

It is a bilingual newspaper serving both English and Spanish speaking Kansans.

It is published by local journalist Marco Alcocer.

You know, and it's so important to have these alternate communication sources for our population.

And it's great that we have this diverse population.

But they also need newspapers in their language.

They they need the information.

And they need and thank you, Al Hernandez, for starting a tradition so long ago that still exists today.

Yes, I love that.

Okay.

Now let's go back even further to 1980.

Jimmy Carter was president.

Pac-Man was a new video game.

And Tony Venegas was a young man working hard and enjoying life.

Yeah.

Tony, as you'll see here, saw the value in his work and he realized the impact he could have on others simply by treating them well and making the best of every encounter.

His shirt is full of sawdust and his hair glistens from wood particles that give away his trade.

Tony Venegas is the mill foreman at a local lumber company and he spends much of his day matching wood products to customers requests and molding friendships that last forever.

Well, I want to put a Formica top on it and it's with pre-finished cabinet.

I guess you've probably written about 24 inches.

That's a standard for your cabinets.

I really enjoy my work.

It's just, it's different to other jobs I've had.

It's something I can all I can make something and say that I made it or help somebody make something or somebody come and say, Well, can you cut this out of me and all that?

And I'll go and cut it and they put together.

And they feel good because they've done something.

Also, I feel good because I have helped them.

No matter how much you don't know about the lumber business, Tony is patient.

He takes time with the customers and cares about that person as an individual.

They are 28 up here.

And what do you get five of them?

They have 40.

72.

Okay.

If we have to.

What else are you going to do?

Anything else on the order?

He works with people because he likes people.

Yeah, yeah.

I really enjoy life because, you know, youre only here for a short period of time, so you might as well make the best of it.

What you make a life is what you enjoy, and that's what I do.

I just enjoy life and people and being around people.

Theyre what you call my family, I guess.

Oh, yeah.

Put on that second truck over there.

Okay.

You ready?

Oh, Im glad they make them rollers.

Tony Venegas.

For those that know him, he's just a nice guy.

This is Larry Hatteberg.

What else are you going to have to get on there?

Okay, we'll get one... Tony eventually retired as the Mill Supervisor at Star Lumber.

He did die, though, in 2016 at age 72.

Now, he was just a good guy.

He was a nice guy.

And, you know, it's sometimes you go out in public and you think they're not making enough nice people anymore.

They arent, right?

And this guy is so nice.

And I love his last profession.

Mill Supervisor, not very many people can say I was a Mill Supervisor.

It's an important job for the rest of us, you know.

Working in the mill.

Exactly.

The last decade or so, we've seen an explosion in the number of wind turbines towering over the Kansas countryside.

Almost half of the electricity generated in Kansas now comes from wind.

But as many of us old timers know, you know, our producer called us old timers.

I'm just... We don't write the intros here.

Well, I know we don't write the intros.

I'm saying.

Yeah.

We're apparently old timers.

Apparently we are.

What are you going to do?

I know I'm not going to do anything, but I'm going to read this anyway.

But as many of us old timers know, there's nothing new about wind power.

It was one of the first sources of electricity on the prairie, dating all the way back to the 1880s.

But by 1980, fossil fuels had all but made the windmills obsolete at least that's what many of us thought.

Fred Kale, though he knew better.

Fred Kale farms near Hiawatha in northeastern Kansas.

Fred's specialty, though, is not wheat or corn or cattle.

Instead, Fred Kale farms memories.

Fred Kale lives at the end of Windmill Lane in Brown County, and it's aptly named because of his fascination with all types of windmills.

Now, I started the first here in 1959, and I put up a few after that as would become available through attending farm auction sales.

Later I decided that I just to see how many I could get, have different varieties, and as a result I have 44 different windmills on the place here in its entirety.

People enjoy looking at them and I enjoy visiting with them to show what has been done as a nostalgic thing for particularly the younger generation, which knew nothing about the problems that they had in the rural areas where they did not have the electricity available.

Well, when I was a kid, as I recall, we had to pump water through what we called a pressure pump.

And we had a pump to be how about like a city block to our home from here where the water supply was and I'm telling you, the road pump pretty hard up and down so my dad and I finally put up a windmill.

And, you know, we kids are really happy to see the wheel turn and pump that water.

I mean, I thought that was really something just gave us more time to play marbles, probably.

Whether it's a wind generator or a windmill.

Fred Kale believes that this generation must learn from the past and with our fossil fuel supplies dwindling.

People like Fred Kale believe that at least a portion of our future energy needs may be blowing in the wind.

Larry Hatteberg, TV 10 News near Hiawatha, Kansas.

As new giant wind farms generate our electricity, Fred Kales old fashioned wind farm continues to generate interest on the east side of Hiawatha.

Around it has sprung the Brown County Historical Society Agriculture Museum.

That is so cool.

It's an old fashioned farm and 1800s town that's been recreated right alongside what they call Windmill lane.

Fred donated the property to the Historical Society upon his death, which was in 1992.

I mean, look what he started.

Yeah.

A whole tourist attraction.

And he had no idea.

He just had a love of windmills.

And so many young people today have no idea what a windmill did out on the prairie.

Or used to look like or.

Used to.

Look like these big old still wind farms now look nothing like the good old fashioned.

You've got to remember where you came from, right?

Us old timers remember.

Yeah, us old people remember.

Yeah.

We'll get you, Jim.

Smoking isn't as popular as it used to be, and cigarette ads are virtually a thing of the past.

But back in the day, you could open just about any magazine and find the Marlboro Man.

Yeah, he was rugged.

He was a macho cowboy, and he was the kind of guy the ladies swooned over.

And he was a Kansan.

In 1980, I interviewed the original Marlboro Man, Wayne Dunafon.

You've had your supper and coffee, the horses are settling down.

You settle back, you start to think about Saturday night in town.

You watch the sun slide down the sky, til its just a big red ball.

And if you sit real still and listen, you can almost hear the evening fall.

Their commercials were classics, and the Marlboro Man became part of Americana.

He personified the American West.

His trademarks were a shearling coat, a cigarette, and a Stetson.

But he wasn't from Texas.

He was from as far west as Westmoreland, Kansas.

20 years of this music has made an indelible mark on the memory.

Everyone knows the Marlboro song, but not everyone knows that Wayne Dunafon had one of the most romantic jobs in television.

Wayne was the Marlboro Man.

My life as a rodeo cowboy and a rancher and so forth had molded me, and more or less into what the Marlboro Man is.

And I don't have to act or anything.

I just do what I normally do.

As far as horses and cattle and ranch business are concerned.

Dunafon was at a rodeo in Cheyenne, Wyoming, when the Philip Morris company discovered his photogenic qualities.

When youre moving 300 head of cattle through strange territory, it can happen before you know it.

It can happen with a flash of heat lightning or a little wind blowing the wrong way at the wrong time.

The interesting thing to me, traveling around all over the western half of the United States and we work on the biggest ranches probably in the country in one place, I'd helped them drive 3400 head of cows to winter pasture.

And the thing that I liked was learning the different operations in the cattle business over the different parts of the country.

So where is Marlboro Country?

Well, for the man behind the image, Marlboro Country is near Manhattan, Kansas.

During the past few years, Wayne Dunafon has saddled up to ride Marlboro country.

And while it may be more romantic to travel by horseback, the real life of Wayne Dunafon means travel by car and working not in the open spaces, but in the confines of gates and fences.

Dunafon, along with two other partners, operate the sale barn called the Manhattan Commission Company, located on the outskirts of that city.

Dunafon is the type of guy who's at home in front of a camera, on top of a saddle or behind a desk.

And his macho image projected in the commercials reflect the real man.

Well, my life has been around livestock and ranching and rodeo, and that's been my entire life and kind of fits right in the Marlboro theme.

And I feel at home there.

Really, I'm not an actor.

I don't have to be.

I just do what's natural.

On the plains of Marlboro Country, Dunafon was king.

But in Manhattan, he's just a neighbor who happens to have been a legend.

This is Larry Hatteberg.

Now, Wayne lived to be 82.

He died in 2001.

And we went out and filmed him on the prairie.

And he just fit the profile of what back in the day, the Marlboro Man was supposed to be a rugged individualist.

He had this wonderful, handsome face.

He was handsome.

And he was in every sense of the word.

Back then, the Marlboro Man.

He absolutely was.

He was a man's man.

He was.

And it's very cool that he came from Kansas.

It was.

The man in this next story could remember outhouses and traveling to church on a horse and buggy.

But despite his age, W.M.

Zuhars may have been considered a modern man.

By 1977 standards.

He didn't care what anybody said.

He enjoyed a hobby that some may have considered feminine, or at least for women only.

These hands that formerly till the soil drove the tractors and did what traditionally was called men's work now spend much of their time making quilts.

83 year old W.M.

Zuhars of Newton is a retired farmer who's taking up quilting as a hobby.

Zuhars has already created 20 quilt tops this year and says he doesn't mind if he makes an occasional mistake.

No, you just got to fix it.

That's all.

When you make a mistake, you just got to fix it.

Sometime you have to tear out some.

But I guess that's the reason the machine company makes it.

Above Zuhars hangs his fabric pieces for one quilt.

He does this so hell know in what order to use each piece.

He says quilting gives him time to think and it keeps his hands occupied.

But Zuhars quickly adds, You can't let your mind wander while you sew.

But then you got to-- You can't be, you can't be all together thinking about too many things.

And so we've got to... Like he says, it's important to keep your mind on your work.

When he first started making quilts he utilized several different designs, but now sticks with one pattern called round the world.

Each quilt has 2602 inch square pieces sewn in 34 circular rows.

When asked why he sticks with one pattern, he says, Why should I change?

I can sell these.

But Zuhars quickly adds that he's not in it to make money.

As he figures it, he only makes about $0.10 an hour for his work.

One of the quilts of which he's the most proud is a large red one that contains 12,000 pieces all about the size of a postage stamp.

And this one is not for sale.

W.M.

Zuhars, a man who is yet to find the meaning of the word retired.

This is Larry Hatteberg.

Mr. Zuhar's oldest granddaughter, still has many of his quilts, and she lives in Ontario, Canada.

Now, over the years, she says she has given a number of them away to people, interestingly enough, having babies.

Those quilts are now scattered from Canada to Oklahoma and to Europe.

He was doing the thing he loved, and as I have said before, it's not a feminine thing.

It's something he wanted to do.

And he did it.

And he left a wonderful legacy.

For his grandkids.

Even in Europe.

And across the United States.

I love that.

Love it.

Many of these people, Larry, has featured through the years.

Tell us what an honor it was to be a Hatteberg person.

For some, it's been a life changing experience, and that was certainly the case with Jason Karber.

Yeah, this is a really interesting story.

I first interviewed Jason back in 2003, and that led to something really big, as you'll see in this story from 2009.

This was Jason Karber seven years ago.

He had moved into the apartments at 250 Douglas Place downtown and was enjoying the singles scene.

Living the high life, right?

Sure.

I like it.

But he knew someday he'd like to get married.

Well, a young woman saw this story, and they've been dating ever since.

Well, seven years have passed since Jason made those comments on a Hattebergs People story.

And recently he called me up and he said, Hey, would you help me?

I want to propose to my fiancee on the big screen at the Warren Theater.

Can you make that happen?

We could, and we did.

Jason brings his fiancee, Lucinda Rietcheck, to the Warren Old Town a few minutes before the movie last Friday night.

Now we have a hidden camera on them that's behind the screen.

Just prior to the movie beginning.

Jason excuses himself and she has no idea what's next.

The movie starts and this comes up on the big screen to a packed Warren Theater.

(Announcer): On the go KAKE News.

Good evening, everyone.

I'm Susan Peters and.

I'm Larry Hatteberg, a special welcome to everyone at the Warren Theater.

We have what I believe is a bit of breaking news tonight.

Tonight, we would like to revisit a Hattebergs People story from March of 2003.

And a fun story It was.

At that time Jason Karber was a single newcomer to Wichita.

He lived over at 250 Douglas Place, that's commonly known in Wichita as the old Holiday Inn downtown.

Well, tonight we learn that there is a change in his life, so we have him outside of the theater for a follow up.

Jason, what's changed since we last did that story?

Well, Larry, a lot's changed.

I've moved out of the high rise that I was living in at 250 Douglas Place, bought a century old home to restore, not far away.

Hey Jason, back in 2003, I asked you if that high rise apartment was a chick magnet, did it turn out to be that way?

Well, Larry, I'm not sure if the high rise did it, but your story sure helped.

Ever since that story ran, I started dating a girl named Lucinda.

And she's wonderful.

She is the world to me.

All right, Jason, that sounds incredible.

So you really think she's the one?

Yeah, Larry, I do.

So, my friend, when do you think you're going to pop the question?

Well, Larry, how about right now?

Oh, wow.

Wow, Larry, it's incredible.

Isnt it?

Going to do the deed!

It is.

I wonder what people are thinking, though, as he's.

He's running to her!

Running frantically through Old Town Square.

Well, whatever they're thinking, they're either thinking he's lost his mind or he's about to change his life in a really big way.

Let's let the action go now inside the theater.

So the folks at the Warren can watch this.

You've made me very happy for a long time.

And I want you make me happy for the rest of my life.

Will you marry me?

Yes.

Say hi to Larry.

Hi, Lucinda.

And congratulations.

Oh, so as they left the theater to celebrate, I asked Lucinda if she was at all suspicious at any point.

I had no idea.

Absolutely no idea.

I'm thrilled because.

Because it worked out, just like I'd hoped.

Flawlessly.

We'll catch the movie some other day.

We'll go to great dinner and head off to vacation as fiancees.

That was my goal was I wanted to leave, not as girlfriend and boyfriend, but as fiancees.

And you helped us make that happen.

It's our pleasure.

So what started out as a movie date turned into a life changing marriage proposal on the big screen.

It's a nice way to end the evening and to begin a new life.

I wasn't worried that she'd say no.

Now if I waited another year, maybe.

Now the Warren, slash, the Regal Old Town Theater.

Well, it's now out of business, but there's no end in sight for Jason and Lucinda.

They married in 2011 and now.

Now they have an eight year old daughter.

Jason says they are very happy.

Had that proposal up on the big screen.

I mean, it was.

How much fun did we have doing that?

We did.

And then you did a story on it.

So we got to see the result.

We had taped it earlier.

You know what went on the screen.

And then that was so much fun.

Well have to do a story on the daughter.

There you go.

It's time for us to split and go our separate ways.

But we are going to be back together very soon to share more stories.

Until then, here is our email address.

Drop us a line with any questions or comments or compliments.

We like that, too.

Or you can just say hi.

I'm Susan Peters.

And I'm Larry Hatteberg.

It was an absolute pleasure to spend time with you today.

So long.