30 minutes of stories about the great people of Kansas are coming your way.

Here's a look.

He would be exuberant knowing that what he started is coming back.

It was 1998 and Cessna was getting back into the single engine plane business.

The widow of the man who built the company was reflecting back on her husband's legacy and the business that was made famous by these classic four seaters.

Also.

And we have a lot of people, our especially our customers, say, why in the world are you in Wichita, Kansas?

And we said, because it's the best city in the United States.

They were a power couple operating on Wichita based international airlines.

Learn their secrets for success and why?

Whatever they did, they did it together.

Plus.

Year after year, I'd see the beautiful week.

And I decided I wanted to learn to make the brand.

And her brand turned out to be a culinary sensation, praised by connoisseurs far and wide, from the field to the oven to the dinner table.

Marsha Slade grew it Baghdad and reaped the rewards.

Learn what got her started and what kept her going.

And they see these old cars and they're looking like new again.

They kind of shake themselves and wonder if they have to, you know, step through the time warp or something.

They're not about 50 years behind in time.

And for the moment they are.

They don't build them like this anymore.

But Stan Gilliland does rebuild them, discover what drove his business and what he's up to now more than 30 years later.

Thank you for joining us.

I'm Susan Peters.

And I'm Larry Hatteberg.

Those are just some of the stories cued up and ready to roll for this week' 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.

It was yet another milestone in an amazing history of success.

Cessna aircraft, based right here in Wichita, has built more airplanes than any other company in history.

But in the 1980s, liability concerns forced the company to quit making its most popular aircraft.

You'll remember it as the legendary single Engine 172.

Then, ten years later, changes in federal law made it feasible to start building those planes again.

That's when Larry took this look back at the man who built the company and the latest chapter in the Cessna story.

We're optimistic about the.

Future growth of general aviation.

Duane Wallace was Mr. Aviation.

He was a common man who loved airplanes and life.

He took Cessna from a closed plant during the Depression to the leading manufacturer of general aviation aircraft.

Inspired at ten years old as he watched an early day airplane soar into the sun.

Until it got almost out of sight.

And I thought, that's the way to go.

That's the way to live.

For 50 years, Duane Wallace was Cessna.

His coworkers loved him.

The industry gave him its highest honors.

But Duane never put on the ears of powers.

He loved his farm, his getaway, his family.

And he enjoyed old leather.

I guess I got to thinking last night how these were wrong and a, they had to be 35 years old, still in good shape, aren't they?

Today is Cessna marks a milestone with their new plant in independence.

We wondered what Duane might think of Cessnas success.

His widow and life partner, Velma Wallace.

He would be exuberant knowing that what he started is coming back.

And he was very disappointed, of course, when they discontinued the single engine airplanes, because that's where it all started.

Velma was hired at Cessna when the young company needed some office help.

Duane Wallace interviewed her for the job, and a while later he told her since he couldn't give her a raise, he'd like to marry her.

Velma became his life partner, and her interest in flying single engine airplanes was accented by his enthusiasm.

I mean, when he got on an airplane, he just emailed.

As far as I was concerned, he mailed it into it.

He was part of the plane.

I'm just an ordinary guy that's worked hard at something he like to do.

Today, Duane Wallace, his legacy lives on through Velma.

The family's commitment to the community is legendary.

A $10 million gift to fund a new science center, scholarships for young people interested in aviation.

And today, a Cessna celebrates their new plant in independence.

Velma Wallace wishes the company the best.

I can really appreciate what's gone into it, the history of it.

And it's a real thrill.

Wish I could have been there and I probably would have gone, but I did not have that opportunity.

Well, Duane and Velma are both gone now, but Cessna is.

Fortunes continue to soar.

The company recently landed some large contracts for those small single engine planes.

And they are the most popular aircraft in the world for training pilots.

Are they aviation legends?

Well, I mean, they will always be remembered here.

They absolutely will.

And I I'm very lucky.

I got to fly in an airplane with Velma because Duane taught her to fly.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

And so after he died, I got to fly in an airplane that she piloted with Velma.

With Velma.

Wallace.

That is.

I will always remember that.

Wait.

Okay, now we're going to go through a couple of Wichita aviators from a younger generation.

Ron and Renee Ryan were a team both at home and the airport where they ran an international airline.

And we have a lot of people, especially our customers, say, why in the world are you in Wichita, Kansas?

And we said, because it's the best city in the United States.

Ron Ryan leases 45 of these seven twenty sevens every month.

His planes fly throughout the U.S., the Caribbean, Guam, Saipan and in chartered European destinations.

Primarily, the business is overnight freight for the U.S.

Postal Service or Emery Worldwide Freight.

He employs 750 people worldwide and makes it all happen from his Wichita offices.

I've often said I said live today like you're going to die tomorrow, but plan today like you're going to live forever.

And that's a philosophy that I try to follow.

And it's worked well for me and I try to get our people to do the same thing.

His partner is his wife of seven years, Renee.

Their offices are adjacent.

Their lives parallel.

We work together every day.

We play together.

We debate, talk, sleep together.

You name it.

And we really, at least in my mind, never get enough of each other.

And it's fun and it's interesting.

And it's it's a way that has worked well for both of us.

Oh, can I.

Well, I.

Can I tell you.

Okay.

When Ron and I first met, I didn't like him.

I shouldn't maybe say that on TV, that I didn't like him because he interviewed me for a job and I thought he was really aggressive and asked a lot of personal questions.

And I thought, who is this guy?

This guy who can pilot a 727 or earlier jet as an entrepreneur of international proportions?

Today on the flight line, you'd never know.

He came from humble beginnings.

Believe it or not, I think I was fortunate because I was so poor when I was young, because I learned what it takes to earn what you get as opposed to having it given to you.

He's at home here in the cockpit of the 727.

And looking back, Ryan says he's made some mistakes.

Should have spent some more time with his children.

But he says he's changed.

He's a different man now, but his love of flying hasn't changed.

When, in fact, if they said, I only had two days to live as long as I still had my medical, I'd say, Hey, Rene, let's go see where we can fly to.

That's the best thing I think about Ron Ryan.

He is my best friend.

We are best of buddies.

People can't think that we want to work together, live together, play together, and then we go on vacation.

They think we're nuts and yet we thrive on that.

The Ryans live in a midtown home built in 1886 by L.W.

Clapp.

It is now completely refurbished.

But the great aspect, in my opinion, is all of his handiwork that still remains the hand-carved doors, the banisters of the stairwell.

And now it has the Ryan's personality.

They live a lifestyle most of us only dream about.

And Ron Ryan knows he's fortunate.

The good Lord's blessed me well beyond all measure.

Why?

I don't know, but I'm glad that he did.

I've said I've been rich and I've been poor.

I like rich better.

Well, Ron and Rene sold the airline back in 2004 and moved to Florida.

Then in 2008, they moved back to Wichita to help raise their granddaughter.

They are involved in a number of philanthropic endeavors and they still enjoy flying.

And you can learn more about them if you go down to the Wichita Aviation Museum, which every which often should go to, it's the old Wichita Municipal Airport.

Great place, great music.

If you haven't been there, just being inside the old Wichita Municipal Airport is a thrill in itself.

The architecture.

And you can just picture the people in their skirts and they used to dress up with the hats walking around the hall lobby and it's just neat.

Fred Astaire did a dance inside the Wichita airport as he was waiting for a plane.

He was between planes.

You're kidding.

Right there.

Too bad we don't know that.

If you went to the Wichita Aviation Museum and saw that.

I must have missed that display.

But.

Okay.

It's a good place to go.

It is.

Well, along with airplanes.

Kansas, of course, is known for its wheat.

But Marcia Slade wasn't content with just growing.

No, she sure was.

And she wanted to go just a step further.

Take a look at this story from 1986.

This goes through quite a process from about 5 a.m. until now.

Okay.

Yes, just that right there.

See it?

Mother used to always paddle the bread.

Marcia Slade lives near Haysville on land that is still called the Slade Homestead.

Oh, yes.

Several times a week, she turns her kitchen into a bakery.

Where after a year I'd see the beautiful wheat.

And I decided I wanted to learn to make the bread out of the wheat right off the land.

And she does.

All right.

This is the wheat from our homestead that we raise.

I make my bread from.

I think it's the handmade part of it.

It has a certain tenderness to it.

When your hand mixing, you go by the feel of, you know and I know my dough.

I know when it's ready to set to raise.

I know when it's ready to put in the loaves.

And I know when it's right to put in the oven.

It's as though you were taking the heart of the land and and making bread out of it.

With dough rising on the stove.

Cinnamon rolls are her next project.

She's been giving away her bread and rolls for years to the church and to friends.

But it was just recently she decided to sell it.

I think they inspired me to sell my bread this year because we could only get $2.20 a bushel.

And I get a lot of bread out of a bushel of wheat.

These are the.

Pretty awesome homes that we've had today.

Anyway, there they come and be ready to do it again day after tomorrow.

It isn't long before Marcia Slade's Homestead Bread is filling up.

Her living and dining rooms now remembers she not only bakes it, she has to package it too.

These big ones are a.

Little bit awkward.

There.

Oh, my.

We're getting a table full here.

But it's quite picturesque when you get it all in the sacks and the labels and everything on it.

Think she's done?

Don't bet on it.

Next stop, a new food store called the Red Barn at 55th Street South in Meridian.

This is the only place you can buy Martha Slade's homestead bread and Martha even delivers it.

Where it becomes work when you don't enjoy something.

I enjoy making bread.

I always have.

It's still worth it.

It's beautiful.

Oh, I have lots of dreams, I guess.

Bye bye there.

Uh huh.

Marcia's business blossom.

She couldn't make that bread as fast as people wanted to buy it.

It's proved to be a nice career for her for a number of years.

But Marcia eventually decided to hang up her apron.

She's 82 years old now and still lives on the same homestead.

But she buys her bread now.

She doesn't make it anymore.

Unfortunately, it's a loss for Kansas.

It is.

And I love doing the story because I love the smell of bread, because it takes me back to Winfield, Kansas, to my dad's bakery.

Oh, that's where I used to smell that bread every day.

So it was a great memory.

And Marcia did a great job.

Thanks, Marcia.

All right.

Here's another Kansan who found his niche and turned it into a long time career.

Stan Gilliland has been restoring classic luxury cars, specifically Cordes and Auburn's for decades in Wellington.

His customers come from around the world.

They see these old cars and they're looking like new again.

They kind of shake themselves and wonder if they haven't, you know, stepped to the time warp or something.

They're not about 50 years behind in time, and for the moment they are.

These things are good at mashing fingers.

I've had a lot of experience with that.

Got to hold your mouth.

Just dry.

It's a lot of fun.

It's an enjoyable job.

There's a lot of satisfaction in working on and restoring the cars.

But at the same time, I realize some of these vehicles are going to survive and be around for other people to enjoy for generations that you know, that aren't even here yet.

And there's a lot of satisfaction in that, because I know then that they wi a lot of man hours going to car.

It takes upwards of 2000 hours to go through a car like this.

And yes, we are really proud of the job.

You have to have pride in your workmanship to do something like this, you know?

This car has real value.

It's solid metal and leather.

There's no plastic or anything artificial on it.

And, you know, this car is 50 years old.

Take a modern 1987 car and look 50 years into the future.

And do you think there's even going to be the steering wheel from this car will be around when that 1987 car isn't even in someone's imagination anymore?

I don't see why a car like this won't last for another 100 years.

Something we've used to decorate the building is old automotive related signs and adds a lot of interest to the place.

And ever since I was a small kid, I've picked up signs on occasion and just piled them around here and there.

And I thought, well, they're all automobile related items.

Let's just put them up for decoration in here.

It does make it quite attractive and keeps me having just blank walls all over.

And every once in a while we'll have somebody come in and they'll say, Well, you know, I've got an old sign like that nailed up on a chicken house.

Would you like to have it?

I do it because I enjoy it.

I could do a lot of other things.

I could make more money out of the things I know.

But it's a comfortable niche and it's a living.

And, you know, I enjoy doing it.

And it's something that's important to me personally.

You know, it's just something that gets in your system.

But it's nice working on the old things.

The old things are really real and concrete and are going to be there, you know, and there's there's a sense of satisfaction in it in that, you know, these vehicles are going to survive.

If it wasn't for automobile restorers, most of these old cars that, you know, that we work on would wind up in some junkyard somewhere with the epitaph.

Rest in peace.

Now, more than 30 years after that story was shot, Stan says he's working on his last car and then, by golly, he's going to retire.

You know, all of the work he did on all those cars.

Who would blame him if he would retire?

But it's so fun working on history.

I'll bet.

Specifically for him.

I'm going to make a bet.

Yeah.

He says it's his last car.

Probably not.

No possible way.

Is that going to be his last car?

That'll be another story.

Absolutely.

All right.

Trendy toys like come and go.

But there's at least one toy that has remained popular with children for generation after generation.

And anything that gets a lot of play is likely to break at some point.

Here's Larry with his daughter, Susan, in 1984.

You know, children really enjoy playing with dolls and they can become a key part of your childhood memories.

Well, there's a woman in Dodge City who understands that.

And so she's made it a business of repairing some of those memories.

They arrive like broken memories.

Evelyn Padgett makes them well.

Evelyn is Dodge City's doll doctor, and these are her patients.

Some of that can.

And you think they had a hectic drive somewhere along the line?

I say about it, they don't lay there and cry or nothing.

They just wait for you, put them back together.

After years of neglect.

Some of her patients can take as long as six months to recover.

Let's say you go get all this all paid off.

This is another reason to carry a fingernail.

It was 1977 when she first hung up her shingle as a doll doctor, and since then, her bedside manner has pulled many at all from destruction.

Most act like they're glad that you're working on them and trying to fix them up.

Now, that sounds like a senile.

It really does when you start talking to the dolls, but they don't bark back.

But a wig on her, she'll change her personality or change and put her makeup on her and get her body back on her.

And by the time you get her dressed, she really does take on a personality.

Each one is kind of a challenge to see what you're going to make out of it.

I don't know.

It's just.

Just fun.

It's just like anybody else's hobby.

I do believe they enjoy it or they wouldn't do it at all.

Most of Evelyn's dolls are success stories.

Many now repaired or waiting for their owners to return.

But there's one doll, as Evelyn calls it, that you might not expect to see.

A doll is in the form of a Tom Selleck poster plastered on Evelyn's back door.

Isn't he Dali?

I think he is such a handsome man.

And I really liked watching you.

Men have all the girls, so I don't know why I ask girls.

Scary of some.

Some of the men.

Thousands of women agree with you, Evelyn.

You know, in her hands, broken dolls become new again.

And for Evelyn, it's the self-satisfaction that comes with the work.

That's the real payoff.

That really is all we have in life is what we get out of doing something for others or the good feeling we get from doing something.

Evelyn Padgett, one of your real life dolls.

This is Laurie Had a bird.

I think she's cute.

All right.

Evelyn kept doctoring dolls for another 26 years, finally retiring in 2010.

She passed away in 2015 at age 93.

But she was one of those women you just enjoyed being around because she was just obsessed with what she loved to do.

Working with those dolls.

Gave her peace and joy and gave a lot of other people peace and joy as.

Well.

It absolutely did.

And she had a lot of visitors and we got a lot of comment when that story first around, like a lot of people wanted to get in touch with them.

All right.

Well, the Kansas Outdoor, she, as you know, is teeming with beauty.

Larry finds it all the time.

So there's no shortage of subjects for while odd life artists like Flona Crawley of Wichita.

Now, Flo has been a prolific painter through the years.

She's won many awards painting true masterpieces that are coveted by nature lovers around the world.

My drawings as a kid were all these animals on the farm.

I like to watch the way they lay and the way the way they hit the water, the formation of their wings.

It's real good to see how the sun's reflecting off the heads of those mallards, too.

All the colors that picks up.

It doesn't upset me that I paint six oil paintings in a row.

To me, quail are the neatest little birds and.

It doesn't bother me at all.

I just started painting just the fun and I never would have guessed it when it got to this point.

Painting to me is a mood type thing.

It's yeah.

To feel like doing it.

And after I sit down for a while and find out it's still fun, then I can forget everything and I guess I still have the feeling that that painting is something you're supposed to do in your spare time.

And it's really not in my situation, I guess it's my business now.

It's best, of course, when there's you don't have anything on your mind, but most of us don't live that way.

It's always plenty of things to think about.

It's real rewarding.

You know, I'm not talking financially necessarily, but self-satisfaction, knowing that someone likes my work well enough to pay money for it.

And it's it's a good feeling.

I think.

People like my work because they understand it and the majority of the people like the outdoors.

I think it's the fact that I do realism and that people can relate to it.

It's great to win them, but it's not great when that's the only thing you're interested in.

It's one person's opinion on that particular day.

It's great to win them.

I can't say that I don't like to win them, but it's it's not something I get hung up about.

Like a name for the moon.

But I need to be knowing that it.

Not all of us can get there.

Or Flo.

Anna is still living here in Wichita.

She gave up painting about 20 years ago and became a master gardener.

Now she volunteers at Botanica and has won awards for her flower and arrangement.

Just another creative endeavor from painting to flowers.

And you can be an artist gardener as well.

That's right.

Well, I guess that's a wrap for today, though.

So for this week's How to Burns People is Over.

But we appreciate you watching.

By the way, if you have a question or comment, email it to hattebergspeople@kpts.org until next time.

I'm Susan.

Peters.

And I'm Larry Hatteberg.

It was great to have you with us.

We'll see you again soon.