It's time for Positively Kansas.

Here's what's coming up.

Half a century after American P.O.W.s were released from Vietnam, one of those prisoners offers words of wisdom and inspiration for us all.

Then see how this accomplished Wichita musician has found a social media niche that helps pay the bills and gives people a chuckle at the same time.

And in our Kansas Wild Edge report, see the importance and joy of teaching children about the marvels of nature.

I'm Sierra Scott.

A half hour of information and inspiration is cued up and ready to roll on this edition of Positively Kansas.

The harrowing accounts of their capture and imprisonment have been chronicled in books and movies.

The experiences of American POWs during the Vietnam War were hellish and terrifying.

It's now been a half century since communist Vietnam released hundreds of American prisoners of war.

Chris Frank spoke with one from Kansas who has a message of hope for people who've suffered traumatic experiences.

And it's not the eight feet between the walls.

It's eight inches between your ears.

You're in a mental box.

Retired Navy Captain Charlie Plumb was a prisoner of war nearly six years in the North Vietnamese prison camp nicknamed Hanoi Hilton.

Plumb describes his prison cell to an audience of the Wichita Downtown Rotary Club as an eight by eight foot box.

I'm convinced the mental boxes of our lives can be more restrictive than those walls of stone and steel that I was behind.

Plumb was in the same P.O.W.

camp at the same time as other notable P.O.W.s.

Those include John McCain, former Arizona senator and presidential candidate.

And Jeremiah Denton, who later served as an Alabama senator.

Denton famously blinked the word torture in this prison interview without his captors being aware.

All were Navy aviators.

All suffered torturous pain at the hands of their captors.

So the first thing I learned is pain.

This hurts.

Hurts a lot.

And you establish plateaus of pain doing that.

Those torture sessions, I would think it really hurts.

But I'm still alive and still breathing.

And if it doesn't get any worse than this, I'm going to survive.

But he says it continued to get worse.

But he kept on surviving.

But Plumb admits in order to survive, he had to rise above his circumstances.

The bad news was my mental state.

I'd given up and surrendered.

Fighter pilots are not trained to surrender.

Plumb says he was dealing with depression and from what he calls a typical prisoner thinking pattern.

I said, my president sent me over here.

It's his dirty Vietnam War.

It's all political.

We know that.

It's not fair what's going on in my life.

But it's not my fault.

I'm the victim of circumstances beyond my control and the enemy's torturing prisoners.

They signed the Geneva Convention.

They're not abiding by it.

It's not fair what's going on in my life.

But it's not my fault Im the victim of circumstances beyond my control.

Plumb says he had to stop thinking he was a prisoner in order to rise above the circumstances.

He says he began to draw on the values he learned growing up in Kansas.

Charles Plumb grew up in a small Kansas community in Douglas County.

I grew up in Lecompton, Kansas, town of some 325 souls.

Lecompton is known as the first territorial capital of Kansas.

From 1855 to 1861, it's located a few miles northwest of Lawrence.

Kansas Values, Midwestern values.

I think formed my personality.

And I certainly would not be the person I am today had I not been raised in Kansas.

He said a farmer flying a piper cub over his house is what first got him fascinated with flight.

I had never seen the ocean that never ridden in an airplane and never been out of the four states of Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri.

But I needed an education.

Plumb says he got that higher education when the U.S.

Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, accepted him.

Four years later came flight school.

Flight training.

Pensacola, Florida.

Texas.

Mississippi, where my flight instructor was, John McCain.

He also trained at the Navy fighter weapons school.

Later known as Top Gun.

He was assigned the F-4 Phantom, the hottest fighter bomber plane at the time.

At that time, Plumb says F-4s were not equipped with missile detection electronics.

The F-4 Phantom, again, was designed as this high altitude supersonic interceptor.

We were to fly so high that the SAMs couldn't get us.

But in Vietnam, the F-4 was forced to fly at much lower altitudes, making the plane more vulnerable to surface to air missiles.

So with no manufacturing installed missile detector, F-4 pilots turned to a commonly purchased electronic gaining popularity in the 1960s called the Fuzz Buster.

The old radar detector used for cops.

Motorists back then used fuzz busters to try to avoid speed detecting radars used by traffic officers, often called the fuzz.

Back then, hence the name fuzz buster.

Turns out the same frequency and wavelength that the Russians use on their SAM missiles are the very same wavelength that the California Highway Patrol uses on their radar.

So believe it or not, pilots of those multimillion dollar planes were having to rely on these off the shelf radar detectors to avoid deadly missiles.

And so I'm flying this $20 million airplane in protected by a $29 fuzz buster.

And it worked.

Well.

It worked to a point.

The fuzz buster only detected a missile in the air.

It couldn't tell the pilot where the missile was.

Plumb says if he could spot the missile in time, he generally could outmaneuver the missile.

But the fateful strike came from a missile he didn't see while flying on his 75th mission.

And so it came up the tail.

Plumb ejected and parachuted to the ground where the North Vietnamese quickly captured him.

I was shot down in 1967.

I was 24, came back in 1973 when I was 30.

The return of the P.O.W.s was celebrated by the Nixon administration in particular, and the nation in general.

Three months after the release of the P.O.W.s, President Nixon and the First Lady, Pat Nixon hosted the largest ever formal dinner at the White House.

But I know that I speak for all of the American people when I say that never has the White House been more proud than it is tonight.

Because of the guests we have tonight.

A large tent was set up on the White House lawn to receive those P.O.W.s, their families and celebrities who would entertain them, including Bob Hope, Sammy Davis Jr and John Wayne.

I want to say thanks for showing the whole world the kind of men a free country can put up when the going gets rough.

Youre the best we have Ill ride off into the sunset with you any time.

Those former P.O.W.s were treated as heroes.

But Plumb says he didn't feel like a hero.

Because I came back and we had tickertape parades, I flew F-4s with the air guard in Wichita.

We did a missing man formation over Cessna stadium.

And and I felt like a hero.

I was treated like a hero.

But it didn't feel like one.

And then when we found out the guys had come home and couldn't wear uniforms, they got spit on because at that time, the Vietnam War was so controversial.

The retired Navy captain is paid to speak all over the nation.

He makes his presentations in his Navy flight suit adorned with patches.

But that wasn't the case when he first started public speaking.

One of the first speeches I made, in fact, in my own high school, and they said, don't come in uniform because you don't know what these kids are going to do.

There was a great division over the war in the U.S. then.

And people begin to understand that the soldier is not the guy that you should complain to.

You know, it's the politicians that send the soldier over there.

You know, and if you don't like that, vote for somebody else.

There was an emotional reunion taking place at the Richard Nixon Library.

Then in 2013, the Richard Nixon Foundation received nearly 200 Vietnam P.O.W.s and their families at the Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, California.

That 40th anniversary of the P.O.W.s repatriation was widely reported on by the media.

Captain Plumb was one of the P.O.W.s interviewed then.

Courage is.

Not always.

You know, the end of the fight.

Courage is a process.

On the occasions those P.O.W.s were together in captivity, they formed a choir and sang.

At the 40th reunion.

They reformed that choir and sang again.

Oh, God, to Thee we lift our prayer and sing.

O, God To Thee we raise our prayer and sing, from within these foreign prison walls... That was 2013.

But several years earlier, while eating at a Kansas City restaurant, Plumb meets his parachute packer, a man eating two tables away recognized Plumb and approached him.

Your Captain Plumb?

I looked up and I said, Yes, sir.

Captain Plumb.

The man rattled off details of Plumb's experience.

You parachuted in enemy hands.

You were captured, tortured.

You spent six years as a prisoner of war.

Somewhat dumbfounded.

I looked up at this guy.

And how in the world did you know all that?

He finally broke into a smile and he said, Because I packed your parachute.

Ill tell you this, but this guy that runs around the country making speeches suddenly I was speechless.

They shook hands and the man says, Best.

I could do was stagger to my feet, which I had a very grateful hand of.

Thanks.

He came up with just the proper words.

The guy grabbed my hand, he put my arm and he said, I guess it worked.

The story of the parachute packer is a central theme in his speeches of how other people in our lives help prepare us to succeed.

So I use that as a metaphor, because how many times do we go through life and never thank the janitor?

You know, we never thank the bookkeeper.

We never thank our moms and dads, you know, for for giving us life.

And yet they have packed our parachutes.

They have prepared us for challenging times like that guy did for me.

He says the most difficult thing about being a P.O.W.

was never really knowing when it would end.

Now, I always believe I was going home.

There was never a day in that prison camp that I didn't keep the faith, that I didn't, you know, that I thought that I was going to die there.

I never thought I was going to die there.

But just the unknowing and how long this is going to last.

And that was sort of that was the stuff that was gnawing at you on a daily basis.

Plumb says he figures his weight dropped to about 115 pounds while there, being fed two bowls of rice daily.

There's a lot of good stuff in rice.

And and it kept us alive and it kept us pretty skinny.

But, you know, we continued to do push ups and sit ups and running in place and isometrics and all that stuff to maintain our strength.

Plumb says military psychologists didn't know what to think of the P.O.W.s once they returned.

Well, I was in the hospital for about two weeks and as I said, they thought wed gone nuts.

Plumb says the doctors thought the P.O.W.s would suffer from shellshock or battle fatigue.

PTSD wasn't the term used then.

They thought would be suicidal.

Plumb says he was guarded by two Marines in a Chicago hospital.

I diverted their attention.

And I escaped from the hospital.

Where did I go?

I went out to the airport to get in an airplane.

He couldn't wait any longer to fly again.

He says he was back in flight training 6 to 8 months after being back home, flying the A-4, A-7, and finally the F-18.

Plumb says he later was a commanding officer of a maintenance group of a Navy facility connected to McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita.

It's mostly mechanics, and we were a repair facility.

According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

An estimated 30% of Vietnam veterans suffer from PTSD.

But Plumb's overarching message is about post-traumatic growth.

And I'm the poster boy for the new term.

It's called PTG.

Post-Traumatic growth.

The whole idea that you can go through a traumatic experience and come out better, you can grow from it.

And that's basically my message.

Plumb says he's involved with camps in Virginia and Arizona with the Boulder Crest Foundation.

The camps take in veterans with PTSD and work to retrain them to grow from their traumatic experiences.

He says post-traumatic growth is real.

He says the Boulder Crest Foundation is already involved with Ukrainian soldiers from the Ukraine Russian War.

I and the other the other P.O.W.s are living proof.

I think that you can go through an experience like this and actually come out better.

Plumb says he means it when he says six years of torture and imprisonment in North Vietnam helped propel him forward to a successful career.

I can't even imagine having a happier, more meaningful life than I have today, had I not been shot down.

It's given me a story to tell that affects the lives of people.

It's given me the confidence to tell the story.

You know, I mean, after youve been through an experience like that?

What else?

You know, standing up and making a speech, you know, is that going to scare me?

So instead of letting any memories of that time now more than a half century ago be a negative weight to drag him down.

He instead uses it to propel him down a path of success and reminding others to be mindful of their parachute packers in their own lives.

This is Chris Frank for Positively Kansas.

Charlie Plumb now lives in Los Angeles.

In 2022, he traveled to 85 speaking engagements across the country.

Not everybody's a singer, that's for sure, but a Wichita musician can turn just about anybody into one without them even knowing about it.

How?

Jim Grawe shows us.

Keyboardist Brandon Etheridge can play any style of music from classical to rock to this.

Ive never been on live television before.

But Sometimes I dont watch the news Cause Im a kid...

It's what Etheridge calls a mini musical, and he has been doing a lot of them lately.

Music has been my career now ever since I graduated college.

Somehow I've made it work.

When the pandemic hit, this Wichitan, who has performed on Broadway and travels the world with a Queen cover band, found himself twiddling his thumbs.

Then, around the time of the January 6th Capitol riot, a friend on Facebook had this funny video that she shared and she said, Hey, composer friends make music with this.

And I looked at it and I thought, Yeah, the woman has a singsong voice.

So I gave it a try.

This was during the pandemic where I didn't have any touring going on or other music, so I was thankful to get away from house renovations and make this music.

What happened to you?

I got maced.

And what happened?

You were trying to go inside.

Yeah, I mean like a foot inside.

And they pushed me down and they maced me.

What's your.

What's your name?

Where are you from?

My name is Elizabeth, I'm from Knoxville, Tennessee.

Why did you want to go in?

Were storming the Capitol, It's a revolution.

This mini musical was an instant hit on YouTube, Tik Tok and Instagram.

I couldn't believe it.

It's like within just a few minutes it had 100,000 views and I thought, There's something wrong here.

My computer.

And then the next morning it was 500,000 views and it ended up racking up 3 million views or so.

Suddenly, the classically trained Etheridge, who is a serious musician, became famous for something that isnt.

The stuff I'm doing is mostly sarcastic, funny parodies.

But Etheridge is taking his new musical genre beyond silly viral videos into the corporate world.

He's been hired to work on employee training videos and commercials.

He says the process takes some time, but for him it comes pretty easy.

Whenever you speak, there's a rhythm.

Whenever you speak, there's a rhythm, right?

And so you can find that rhythm.

And every person has a different one.

Every word has a pitch.

Excited voices are better than low grumbling, somebodys talking like this...

So it's not going to make for very good music, right?

So if it's a higher voice or an excited voice or an angry voice or a really enthusiastic, you know, then you can really make good music out of it.

John is now retired, but he says that includes one of the most familiar and beloved voices known to Kansas.

Larry has a really low voice but is very melodic, so this is going to be a fun one.

John is now retired, but he says really not much else has changed.

He even still drives that Model T. You can find his many musicals on YouTube, Tik Tok and Instagram.

Just Google Brandon Ethridge.

Sometimes it's fun to just put away the electronics and experience the timeless peace and beauty of the great outdoors.

In this week's Kansas Wild Edge report, Mike Blair shows us how fun and exciting it is to introduce children to the marvels of nature.

Richard Louv calls it Nature Deficit Disorder The disconnect of children in modern generations from the vast natural world around us.

His book, Last Child in the Woods, explains how curiosity and stimulation of developing children is hindered without connection to real, touchable and breathable outdoors experiences.

His thesis asserts that even the best of modern instruction about our world can never replace the act of turning over a rock, catching a fish or climbing a tree.

Only such real connections can consummate imagination and transfer into children the true energies of life.

He's right, and it takes but a few hours to watch a child's mind expand in the outdoors.

I grew up in the fields and woodlands, and those experiences are lifelong treasures and they are renewed even in my sixth decade, as I teach my grandson simple things that many now regard as lore and secrets.

Ill not attempt to rewrite Louv's book.

Instead, let the cameras show what happens when children are allowed to sample life through direct contact without fear of getting wet or dirty.

See the joy and curiosity written on their faces as they partake in real adventures.

Yes, where hot and cold and bugs and spiders and birds and poison ivy and snakes and all the rest have their places.

And the children learn that they can live and share in it.

Some oversight, of course, is important as they learn.

But so is unimpeded space, where the process of self-discovery builds confidence and thinking skills.

The outdoors is a place where all senses can come into play and where instincts can finally be home to the point of provision.

Cycles of life and death are tangible here.

Lending Perspective for a gated, push-button world.

Thoreau and others grew from the peace and solitude found outdoors.

And so do our children now.

Those lucky enough to experience such things in their formative years.

Connection with nature is truly important.

I got it.

I like butterflies.

Take them out while the wonder is still in their mind.

Provide the freedom that must be tasted to be understood.

The window of opportunity closes faster than many might wish.

Learn for yourself if necessary and show your little ones the path to nature's education.

Do your part to ensure that America never sees its last child in the woods.

I'm Mike Blair for Positively Kansas.

That's a wrap for this week.

If you have a story idea, were always looking.

Im Sierra Scott, be well and I'll see you again soon.